Comparing Military Spend Around the World
One of the easiest ways to identify a nation’s priorities is by tracking its expenditures, and military spend is no different.
Usually spending is measured, and ranked, in absolute amounts. For example, countries around the world collectively spent $2.1 trillion on their militaries in 2021, with the most coming from the U.S. ($800 billion), China ($293 billion), and India ($77 billion).
But these eye-popping figures are best understood in the context of each country’s economy. Using data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Varun Jain has visualized 158 countries’ military expenditures, both as a percentage of their total GDP as well as in average per-capita spend.
Countries’ Military Spend as a Percentage of their Economy
To begin, Jain identified three categories of military expenditure as a percent of GDP, using the five-year (2018‒2022) average for more consistent data:
Military Spend | % of GDP | Countries |
---|---|---|
High | Above 5% | 7 |
Medium | 2‒5% | 44 |
Low | Below 2% | 107 |
Under this categorization, the stand outs are the countries spending an outsized amount of their economic output on military, rather than the highest total spenders in absolute terms.
At the top of the table is Ukraine, which has earmarked a staggering average of 9.46% of its total economic output on defense over the past five years. That’s well ahead of second-place Saudi Arabia, which is (Read more...)