# What do wealthy countries that spend less on military or healthcare than the US spend that money on **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 17, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718 "2015-06-17T03:02:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/1 "2015-06-17T03:02:49Z")
This isn’t meant to be a debate, I’m genuinely curious how the macroeconomics of this works. The US spends about 18% of GDP on healthcare, and about 4% on the military. Most other wealthy nations spend closer to 10% on healthcare, and maybe 1-3% on military. Example, I think the UK spends about 11% combined on military and healthcare (2% and 9%) vs 22% in the US (4% and 18%). So what does a nation like the UK do with that extra 11% of their economy? How does that get divided up on the macro scale? ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/2 "2015-06-17T03:12:08Z")
Well, you could spend almost $400 million on a [cool tunnel](http://m.thelocal.fr/20131206/video-lyon-opens-worlds-first-bike-tunnel-green-tube). And it’s not even for cars. Watch the video. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/3 "2015-06-17T03:38:09Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > This isn’t meant to be a debate, I’m genuinely curious how the macroeconomics of this works. > > The US spends about 18% of GDP on healthcare, and about 4% on the military. Most other wealthy nations spend closer to 10% on healthcare, and maybe 1-3% on military. > > Example, I think the UK spends about 11% combined on military and healthcare (2% and 9%) vs 22% in the US (4% and 18%). > > So what does a nation like the UK do with that extra 11% of their economy? How does that get divided up on the macro scale? The scales of the two economies are vastly different so percentages may be misleading. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/4 "2015-06-17T05:48:34Z")
Well, according to Wikipedia the UK spends 14.2% of GDP on gross fixed investment (“fixed assets, such as factories, machinery, equipment, dwellings, and inventories of raw materials, which provide the basis for future production”) whereas the US only spends 12.8%. Course, some of that overlaps with health expenditure (spending on hospitals and health infrastructure). According to the World Bank, they spend about 6% on education, as opposed to 5.2% in the US. They spend about 0.6% on foreign aid, as opposed to 0.2% in the US. But that’s just public expenditure; I haven’t seen combined public+private figures. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/5 "2015-06-17T07:47:30Z")
Off the top of my head and going by perceptions, I’d guess a substantial whack of privately-spent money in the UK is going on property. Not clear whether these figures include money coming in to the economy from overseas and spent here: there are some eye-watering sums of foreign money going into the London property market and inflating it to a ridiculous level. I suspect we also spend a lot more on imported goods. Try [http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx](http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx) ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/6 "2015-06-17T08:53:33Z")
Duh, that’s the budget for the Ministry of Magic. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/7 "2015-06-17T09:00:06Z")
Is there actually anything extra? The UK spends less on healthcare, but it also has a smaller per capita GDP. It may be that we’re spending money they just don’t have. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/8 "2015-06-17T09:16:07Z")
In the UK, I suspect that most of it is spent on pensions and welfare. This is how the budget for 2016 looks: Pensions - 21% Education - 12% Defence - 6% Welfare - 15% Interest on debt - 8% This, of course, is the percentage of total spend not GDP. Here is a link to a comprehensive data set with links to UK and USA [UK Spending Pie Chart in 2024 - Charts](http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_budget_pie_chart) ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/9 "2015-06-17T09:32:17Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Is there actually anything extra? The UK spends less on healthcare, but it also has a smaller per capita GDP. It may be that we’re spending money they just don’t have. The OP is asking about spending as a percentage of GDP. If the UK spends a lesser percentage than the US on health and defence (and it does) then it must be spending a greater percentage on some other category or categories of expenditure. What are those categories? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/10 "2015-06-17T09:37:44Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > In the UK, I suspect that most of it is spent on pensions and welfare. This is how the budget for 2016 looks: > > Pensions - 21% > Education - 12% > Defence - 6% > Welfare - 15% > Interest on debt - 8% > This, of course, is the percentage of total spend not GDP. > > Here is a link to a comprehensive data set with links to UK and USA [UK Spending Pie Chart in 2025 - Charts](http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_budget_pie_chart) The OP isn’t asking about _government_ spending. The figures he gives for health expenditure in the US and the UK are for aggregate public _and private_ expenditure, and they are a percentage of GDP, not of government spending. Yes, the UK may (or may not) transfer more money from workers to retirees/the disabled/the unemployed in the form of pensions and welfare than the US does, but that doesn’t really answer his question. What are the recipients of those transfers spending the money they get on? If the UK is spending only 9% of GDP on health while the US spends 18%, are the Brits then spending a higher percentage on beer and skittles? Foreign holidays? Art and culture? Food? Housing? Transport? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/11 "2015-06-17T09:51:15Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > In the UK, I suspect that most of it is spent on pensions and welfare. That’d be my guess for France as well. Education’s big too however - according to Wiki, as of 2014 we spend nearly twice as much on education than defence, and another lump sum ~equal to the defence budget in subsidies to R&D. Coulda fooled me, with all the budget cuts my university had to deal with this year… ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/12 "2015-06-17T10:06:18Z")
“Social protection” in the UK is 21.7% of GDP; in the US, it’s 19.2%. That includes pensions, unemployment, disablity, etc, but it also includes things like spending on public housing. Just to confuse matters further, it also includes government spending on health services. But, as already pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily answer the OP’s question, since social protection consists to a signficant extent of transfer payments (take money from Peter, give it to Paul). If you want to know what the US or the UK is actually spending its money on, you ignore transfer payments. To the extent that social protection is the government providing housing or healthcare to the needy, then it’s expenditure on housing and healthcare, and will also show up in those figures. To the extent that it’s a straight transfer of cash, you just ignore it. The data you want is not how much did you take from Peter to give to Paul, but what did Paul spend his income on. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/13 "2015-06-17T10:18:58Z")
I was going to say that pretty much all health expenditure in the UK is government spending. It is, but when I looked it up - private health accounts for 15% of the total. Most things cost more here too while the Average Monthly Disposable Salary (After Tax) is pretty much the same. There are some wide differences: Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Centre USA: $2,172.06 - UK: $4,916.88 Basic (Electricity, Heating, Water, Garbage) for 85m2 Apartment - USA: $158.08 - UK: $231.37 [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare\_countries\_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+Kingdom](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+Kingdom) ---
**Author:** ![dr\_zippermeyer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c0e974/32.png) [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/14 "2015-06-17T11:05:49Z")
Sweden spends roughly 7% of their GDP to their peculiar immigration policy, according to one estimate. This estimate was made before immigration spike last year so it is hard to say how accurate it is at the moment. But it is quite telling they are now housing immigrants and students to shipping containers. All the other buildings are already vacant and apparently there are no resources to build more. [http://www.thelocal.se/20150409/containers-set-to-become-homes-for-swedish-students](http://www.thelocal.se/20150409/containers-set-to-become-homes-for-swedish-students) The amount they spend on immigration consist such things as welfare benefits, educating natives to be multicultural, language teaching / translation services, antiterrorism, security services for unpopular politicians and artists, cost of widespread arson, special nurture packages for returning ISIS combatants, increased workload for police, firemen, psychologists, jails and hospitals etc. Minus, of course, taxes paid by immigrants, but that is included to this 7%. I didn’t wrote down sources but in case there is something particular that rises wide spread suspicion I will find it for you. But anyway, it is quite different compared to American or Canadian immigration. It is an experiment but let’s hope it all turns out well. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/15 "2015-06-17T11:54:23Z")
I dpn’t think its necessarily a fair comparison. Firstly as military spending can easily go up, as some new weapon system is brought online, if there are troops deployed on active operations. Secondly, spending by whom? The military is always the responsibility of the a countries Central Government, while benefits, medical costs etc may well be monies spent by subnational entities. If in a country, 100% of Health and education costs are bourne by sub national entities like provinces, or States and most of it is from the Provincial revenue then and in another country the Centeral Government pays for everytjing, then you really cannot compare the two can you. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/16 "2015-06-17T14:25:47Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > According to the World Bank, they spend about 6% on education, as opposed to 5.2% in the US. [Which actually translates into the US having the highest per-student expenditure in the world, and about 33% more than the UK.](http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/) Great example of how percentages are misleading. Even if the US spent 1.2% of GDP on defense, putting it in line with say… Germany, Finland or Sweden, we’d still nearly double the next largest nation’s (China) expenditures. That’s the thing- the US economy is SO overwhelmingly huge compared to those of other nations, that simple percentage comparisons don’t always hold valid- there are things where the costs don’t scale with GDP, so that the US can get away with spending less percentage-wise, and actually spending more overall per-capita than other countries. The education situation above is a great example. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/17 "2015-06-17T14:38:23Z")
> [@bump](#): > > [Which actually translates into the US having the highest per-student expenditure in the world, and about 33% more than the UK.](http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/) > > Great example of how percentages are misleading. > > Even if the US spent 1.2% of GDP on defense, putting it in line with say… Germany, Finland or Sweden, we’d still nearly double the next largest nation’s (China) expenditures. > > That’s the thing- the US economy is SO overwhelmingly huge compared to those of other nations, that simple percentage comparisons don’t always hold valid- there are things where the costs don’t scale with GDP, so that the US can get away with spending less percentage-wise, and actually spending more overall per-capita than other countries. The education situation above is a great example. I don’t think that is relevant. If they are not spending money in health and education, what do they spend that money on? Australia has a higher per capita gdp than the US and like the UK they spend 11% combined on military and health. What do they do with the other 11% compared to the US. That extra money is going somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/18 "2015-06-17T14:42:02Z")
> [@](#): > > The education situation above is a great example. The military is actually a good example of that, too. The US domestic defense market is so large that we can support multiple large defense contractors working on competing weapons systems (though not as many as in the past.) European states are not only basically down to one major contractor each,\* they have to partner on major weapons systems to ensure orders are large enough to offset development costs. So the UK (BAe), Germany (EADS) and Italy (Aermacchi) all had to collaborate on the Eurofighter to keep unit costs low enough that they could all afford a large buy. By contrast, the USAF ordered so many F-16s, F-15s, F-18s and so on that future unit costs are relatively small and they are more competitive on the export market. That means the USAF can afford even more of them because other countries bought enough to offset some development costs. The same is true to some extent of US healthcare spending, though there are fewer concerns over nationalism and protectionism in, say, the MRI scanner market. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/19 "2015-06-17T18:20:59Z")
The US spends less on [food](http://www.ibtimes.com/us-spends-less-food-any-other-country-world-maps-1546945) than any other country. Americans spend 6.6% of their consumer expenditures on food and 2% on tobacco. Canada, the UK and Oz each spend about half again as much. Other OECD countries are at about twice as much. ---
**Author:** ![dr\_zippermeyer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c0e974/32.png) [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718/20 "2015-06-17T19:26:41Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > So the UK (BAe), Germany (EADS) and Italy (Aermacchi) all had to collaborate on the Eurofighter to keep unit costs low enough that they could all afford a large buy. By contrast, the USAF ordered so many F-16s, F-15s, F-18s and so on that future unit costs are relatively small and they are more competitive on the export market. That means the USAF can afford even more of them because other countries bought enough to offset some development costs. Interesting point, I have never thought it that way but you might be right [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-wealthy-countries-that-spend-less-on-military-or-healthcare-than-the-us-spend-that-money-on/722718.md?page=2)