Countries by Military expenditure (% of general government expenditure)
Ukraine ranks first among 153 countries with 54.01% of general government expenditure directed to the military. At the other end, Sierra Leone records just 0.003%. The gap of more than 54 percentage points reflects the extreme variation in how governments prioritize defense within their overall budgets.
Ranking 2024
Values shown in %.
Analysis
This metric measures military expenditure expressed as a percentage of general government expenditure, showing what share of total public spending each government devotes to defense. The unit is percentage points, and a higher value indicates a larger military share of the budget. Data are drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code MS.MIL.XPND.ZS, for the reference year 2024. The dataset covers 153 countries, with 151 of 153 (98.7%) having data from the last seven years and 100% of datapoints classified as official-quality. The ranking contains 25 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, reflecting the wide dispersion in the data, which spans from 0.00% to 54.01%, a spread of over 1,803,000%.
The top of the ranking is dominated by countries engaged in active conflict or sustaining large standing militaries relative to government size. Ukraine leads at rank 1 with 54.01%, followed by Belarus at rank 2 with 50.66%. Myanmar ranks 3rd at 29.10%, and Gulf states Qatar (rank 4, 26.88%) and Saudi Arabia (rank 5, 22.31%) follow. Somalia ranks 6th at 21.57%, Algeria 7th at 21.38%, and Oman 8th at 20.13%. Singapore ranks 9th at 20.13% and Israel 10th at 19.99%, both reflecting high defense allocations relative to total government budgets despite being stable, high-income economies. Russia ranks 11th at 18.90%.
The middle of the ranking shows a broad cluster of countries allocating between 4% and 8% of government spending to the military. The United States ranks 35th at 9.11%, while NATO members Poland (rank 39, 8.47%), Lithuania (rank 44, 7.92%), and Estonia (rank 46, 7.51%) rank notably higher than Germany (rank 106, 3.93%), France (rank 114, 3.59%), and Italy (rank 121, 3.18%). Japan ranks 118th at 3.25% and Canada 122nd at 3.08%. At the lower end, Ireland ranks 151st at 1.00%, Mauritius 152nd at 0.48%, and Sierra Leone 153rd at just 0.003%.
This metric captures only the share of government budget, not the absolute level of military spending, so a country with a small government budget can rank highly even if its total military expenditure in dollar terms is modest. Conversely, large economies with extensive social spending may rank lower despite substantial absolute defense budgets. Reporting practices vary across governments, and some expenditures classified outside official defense budgets may not be captured. Countries with significant off-budget military financing or those in conflict may have less reliable expenditure data. The presence of 25 extreme outliers flagged at the 3-sigma threshold indicates that a small number of countries significantly skew the distribution, and rankings at the extremes should be interpreted with this in mind.
Methodology
The metric is defined as military expenditure expressed as a percentage of general government expenditure, sourced from the World Bank World Development Indicators (indicator code MS.MIL.XPND.ZS), with a reference data year of 2024. The ranking covers 153 countries. Of these, 151 of 153 (98.7%) have data from within the last seven years, and 144 of 153 (94.1%) have data from the latest available year. All 153 datapoints (100%) are classified as official quality, exceeding the 70% threshold. The data exhibit high variance, with values ranging from 0.003% (Sierra Leone, rank 153) to 54.01% (Ukraine, rank 1), a spread of over 1,803,000%. The average year-over-year change across the dataset is 11.8%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. Twenty-five countries are flagged as extreme outliers at the 3-sigma level, indicating significant skew at the upper end of the distribution. No microstates under 1 million population are present in the dataset.