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'Leave no one behind' has become an important principle of the entire 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals that brings inequality to the centre stage. Although a precise definition of what it is to lag behind is essential to assess sustainable economic growth and social progress a discussion on the desirable properties of such a measure is absent in the literature. This paper fills that gap by proposing and discussing a number of normative and analytical properties a measure of the 'Leave no one behind' principle should satisfy. The axioms proposed are necessary and sufficient to characterize the fuzzy measure by García-Pardo et al. [8] and together with other additional axioms make the structure of this measure more transparent. • Leaving no one behind is the central focus of the Sustainable Development Goals. • The Leaving no one behind principle suggests going beyond the averages. • The ambiguity of the left behind principle makes it convenient to use a fuzzy approach. • We discuss desirable properties of a measure of the extent an individual lags behind. • A subset of axioms characterizes the fuzzy set proposed by García-Pardo et al. [8]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]