Over all, there is no denying the fact that the US puts an immense amount of money into their military, healthcare, and
education – but there are many different perspectives with which you can look at expenditure. Russia spends a higher
percentage of their GDP on their military than the US and the US also spends a lower percentage of their GDP on education
than many countries – including Brazil, the UK and Australia. When you look at spending relative to population, Australia
spends more per person on their education than the US.
When comparing how countries are spending their money overall, it’s clear that healthcare seems to be the top priority.
Education comes in second – but I was surprised to see how close education and military spending was for some countries –
especially the US and China. I wasn’t really surprised since I know these countries tend to spend a lot on their military,
but seeing it in numbers was still shocking.
I thought it would be interesting to look at the sum of spending across all 12 countries during this 5 year period and see what percent of the total expenditure each country makes up.
The US consistantly makes up the highest percentage of expenditure - and in the case of military and healthcare the US makes up over HALF of all of the spending across these 12 countries. This again really drives home how much the US spends across these three sectors.
When looking at the absolute change from 2013-2017, China and India are the only countries with greater spending across all three sectors. The United States had a decrease in military spending but spent significantly more on healthcare and education in 2017 than in 2013.
Now looking at the rate of change from 2013 to 2017 – it is clear to see that India and China
are growing the fastest. They both had an increase of over 20% in each sector. India however
grew the fastest specifically in education and military spending while China was the fastest growing
in healthcare spending. Russia is in the lead when it comes to the country who is actually decreasing their
spending at the highest rate. We see a lot of European countries – Italy, Germany, the UK – also decreasing
their spending for the most part.
Some final thoughts...
Doing this project as someone living through a pandemic in 2021, it is easy to assume
that these trends might not hold up during this time. Using the years 2013-2017 to do this analysis was the
most accurate way for me to compare the spending between these countries because 2017 was one of the most recent
years for which I could find the most accurate data across all three sectors. I think it would be safe to say that
most of these countries have been hit very hard by Covid-19 and their healthcare spending has probably increased
significantly from the years 2013-2017. I also wouldn’t be surprised if their education and military spending has
decreased since they are spending so much on healthcare due to the pandemic.