Sovereign rows of the World Bank / SIPRI “Military expenditure (% of GDP)” indicator. Top 30 by most recent year. Aggregates excluded.
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How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Military Expenditure as Share of GDP by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS). Values are expressed in % of GDP.
What to watch. Mark 2014 and 2022: after Crimea and again after the invasion of Ukraine, watch Poland and the Baltic states start climbing toward and past NATO’s 2% guideline. Geopolitical shocks turn into budget lines almost in real time here.
Caveats. As a share of GDP, the ratio can jump in a recession even when spending is flat — the denominator moved, not the army. Countries also differ in what they count (conscription costs, paramilitary forces), and some figures are estimates where budgets are opaque.
Trends in the data
Ukraine’s line stands out even across 65 years of this series. In 2021 it read 3.43%, unremarkable among the countries covered. Then 25.64% in 2022, 36.53% in 2023 and 34.48% in 2024 — ten times the level of three years earlier. Military spending rose, but the denominator also shrank as the war hit GDP. A share-of-GDP indicator amplifies change twice over in circumstances like these.
Russia’s movement is milder by comparison. It rose from 3.58% in 2021 to 4.61% in 2022, 5.40% in 2023 and 7.05% in 2024 — less than a doubling. Two countries in the same war carry very different burdens relative to the size of their economies. Even against 4.43% in 1992, the 2024 figure is only 1.6×. On the numbers, the invaded country bears by far the heavier share.
The 30-country average climbed from 6.03% in 1960 to a spike of 12.79% in 1991, bottomed at 3.17% in 2006, and has recovered to 6.03% in 2024. The 1991 spike coincides with the Gulf War, and is amplified by the fact that only 18 countries had values that year. One extreme value in a year with a small sample moves the average a long way — a caveat that applies throughout this series. Coverage runs 10 countries in 1960, 29 in 2000 and 24 in 2024.
The largest long-run decline is Jordan’s, from 20.40% in 1960 to 4.80% in 2024, a factor of 0.24, dropping from 1st to 11th. The United States fell from 8.99% to 3.42%, 0.38×, from 3rd to 18th. Countries that spent heavily during the Cold War have come down while countries carrying regional conflicts have gone up. The largest increases are Algeria (1.61% → 7.97%, 8th to 3rd) and Burkina Faso (0.68% → 4.68%, 6.88×), and the spread between top and bottom widened from 19.72 to 31.50 points. Note that the top 30 is cut by latest value, so countries below roughly 3% of GDP — Japan and China among them — do not appear, which says nothing about the absolute size of their budgets.
Trivia quiz
Why is military spending often compared as a share of GDP?
To compare economies of different sizes on one scale and see how heavy the military burden is; rankings differ from absolute dollars. (Source)
Which Swedish institute is a leading source of data on world military expenditure?
SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). (Source)
What share-of-GDP defense-spending guideline do NATO members aim for?
2%, reaffirmed at the 2014 summit, which many members have been urged to meet. (Source)
Source
World Bank / SIPRI — Military expenditure (% of GDP) (MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS)