The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and human capital: the case of Azerbaijan

PurposeT - his article aims to relate investments in human capital to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), and examine the spending levels necessary to achieve high performance in related SDG sectors for Azerbaijan.Design/methodology/approach - Employing data from the World Bank, the empirical approach undertaken in this study relies on peer analysis by examining spending levels for nations exhibiting similar income levels and geographical proximity to Azerbaijan.Findings - This study estimates that total spending in education would need to increase by 0.4 percentage points of GDP by 2030, while total spending in health would need to increase by 5.9 percentage points of GDP by 2030 for Azerbaijan.Originality/value - This study contributes to the literature by conducting an empirical analysis in which other nations can emulate in measuring their relative progress on human capital investments and related UN SDGs.Peer review - The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0137