The 2025 SERF Index

The 2025 SERF Index Update is now an outdated version of the SERF Index.  The data files are provided here for the convenience of researchers who may be currently using these older versions of the data.

The 2025 SERF Index Update extends the series to cover a full 32 years—1990 through 2022 and can be downloaded below.  The 2025 Update includes sex disaggregated data for both assessment standards on the right to education, the right to food and two components of the right to health.  Additionally, it provides sex disaggregated data for the high-income assessment standard on one aspect of the right to work.

Both the low- and middle-income and the high-income variants of the International SERF Index are calculated for all countries with the requisite data, and the series are comparable across countries and years but are not comparable across high-income versus low-and middle-income assessment standards. Researchers can evaluate countries with the available data on either assessment standard.

Beyond extending the time frame, the 2025 Update has updated all of the Achievement Possibility Frontiers (APFs) using the recently released 2021 PPP$ to measure GDP per capita.

When computing a country’s score on a right or right aspect, the most recently available data on a given right enjoyment indicator (and the per capita income data for the corresponding year) is used. The surveys providing many of the indicators on enjoyment of rights are not conducted annually, so the data used for each year are not always unique. For example, in the case of the reproductive health component of the Right to Health score for Gambia, the 2020-2022 series use data on modern contraceptive use in 2020. The maximum ‘look-back’ period is 10 years.  That is, if the most recently available data on an indicator is more than 10 years prior, the score for that right aspect is recorded as “missing” for that country and year, and so too is the score for the corresponding Component Right Index and variant of the International SERF Index. In the case of data covering 1990 to 1999, the maximum lookback period is shorter, specifically, it is the number of years back to 1990.

The 2025 Update has scores for up to 200 countries:

• For the low- and middle-income assessment standard, the SERF Index is available for up to 98 countries in any given year (the exact number depending on the year), while the Component Right Indices are available for up to 199 countries (the exact number depending on the right and year).
• For the high-income assessment standard, the SERF Index is available for up to 28 countries in any given year (the exact number depending on the year), while the Component right Indices are available for up to 160 countries (the exact number depending on the right and year).

The 2025 Update technical manual and data sets including the individual indicator performance scores as well as the Component Right indices can be downloaded here.

Download 2025 international SERF Index Data.xlsx

Download international SERF index Technical Note 2025 Update