- Currently, every NATO member spends less on their military than on health or education
- However, a 5% GDP defense target would push 21 of them to spend more on the military than on schools.
NATO countries officially agreed to raise their defense expenditures to 5% of their GDP by 2035.
But how do their military expenditures compare to what they spend on health and education?
This visualization shows a side-by-side comparison of government spending priorities as a percentage of GDP for all NATO members.
Data for this visualization comes from NATO’s public releases, and two World Banks sources: education and health spending.
Figures from the most recent year for each metric is used, listed in the above graphic and in the table in the next section.
Compared: NATO’s Spending on Military Vs. Education and Health
Currently, every NATO country currently spends less on its military than on health or education.
However, the new 5% of GDP target for defense spending is currently higher than what every NATO country currently spends on their military.
| Country | Military Spend (% of GDP, 2024) |
Health Spend (% of GDP 2022/23) |
Education Spend (% of GDP 2021/22) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇵🇱 Poland | 4.1 | 7.0 | 4.7 |
| 🇪🇪 Estonia | 3.4 | 7.0 | 5.3 |
| 🇺🇸 U.S. | 3.4 | 16.5 | 5.4 |
| 🇱🇻 Latvia | 3.2 | 7.6 | 4.6 |
| 🇬🇷 Greece | 3.1 | 8.5 | 4.1 |
| 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 2.9 | 7.3 | 4.3 |
| 🇫🇮 Finland | 2.4 | 9.7 | 6.5 |
| 🇩🇰 Denmark | 2.4 | 9.4 | 5.3 |
For example, Poland leads NATO in military spending at 4.1% of GDP, driven by concerns over the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. defense budget, despite being close to $1 trillion, is still about 3% of its GDP. This is only a fraction of what it spends on health: 16.5% of its GDP.
For reference, this chart breaks down the U.S. consumer economy, where health care accounted for $3 trillion in American spending in 2023.
While the U.S. is an outlier for its comparative health expenditure, health remains the largest expenditure category for all NATO countries.
However, a 5% defense spending target would push 21 countries into spending more on their militaries than schools.
Has Europe’s Free Defense Ride Ended?
The new 5% target is a dramatic reversal in priorities for many European nations, particularly in Western Europe, where defense has long taken a back seat to public services.
However President Trump’s threats of pulling back U.S. support is now forcing a continent-wide re-militarization, especially in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
To meet the new threshold, governments will need to either raise revenues dramatically or pull funding from other areas.
