The economic, social and environmental crises of recent years have caused a global concern for the need to find mechanisms that enable efficient development processes and that lead countries towards sustainability. In particular, emerging countries have specific characteristics that force them to face the issue of sustainable development under a very particular vision about how actions should be taken to generate public policies and programmes that suit their own needs and the well-being of their citizens. With this perspective, our study presents a methodology based on the model of forgotten effects developed by Kaufmann and Gil Aluja. This methodology quantifies (using expert groups) the relationship between the indicators of Mexico's social progress index and its sustainability to determine the incidence of the components of this index in the country's sustainability activities, with the objective of providing elements for better decision-making in the design of strategies, actions and public policies aimed at the sustainable development of the nation