Which countries spend more on the military than on education?
Updated 20 August 2026 · 3 min read · by the Geopolitix team
Ukraine devotes the largest share of its government spending to defence, 54%, followed by Belarus (50.7%) and Myanmar (29.1%). At the other extreme, Mauritania puts 31.9% of its budget into education, the highest share in the world. Both figures are shares of government spending, not of GDP. Data: World Bank, defence 2018–2024 and education 2016–2025.
The largest defence shares of government spending
Military expenditure as a share of central government spending.
#
Country
Defence budget
1
🇺🇦 Ukraine
54%
2
🇧🇾 Belarus
50.7%
3
🇲🇲 Myanmar
29.1%
4
🇶🇦 Qatar
26.9%
5
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
22.3%
6
🇸🇴 Somalia
21.6%
7
🇩🇿 Algeria
21.4%
8
🇴🇲 Oman
20.1%
9
🇸🇬 Singapore
20.1%
10
🇮🇱 Israel
20%
Source: World Bank · data 2018–2024 · 147 countries ranked · the same table Geopolitix rounds are drawn from.
Two budgets, two maps
The defence map darkens across the conflict zones and the Gulf; the education map darkens across sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, where young populations and small states put schooling at the centre of the budget. Reading them together is the exercise: very few countries are dark on both.
Hover or tap any country for its value. Tap a legend colour to isolate a band.
Defence budget, 147 countries, shaded by rank. Source: World Bank · data 2018–2024. Projection: Equal Earth, so every country's area is honestly proportioned.
Hover or tap any country for its value. Tap a legend colour to isolate a band.
Education budget, 156 countries, shaded by rank. Source: World Bank · data 2016–2025. Projection: Equal Earth, so every country's area is honestly proportioned.
Almost every published military ranking uses one of two other denominators: total dollars, where the United States dwarfs everyone, or share of GDP, which is the NATO 2% target. This one uses share of the government's own budget, and it answers a different and more revealing question: of the money the state actually controls, how much goes to the armed forces instead of to everything else?
By that measure the picture inverts. The United States, the largest military spender in absolute terms by a wide margin, sits at 35th on 9.1%, because its government also runs enormous health and pension programmes. Ukraine (1st) and Belarus (2nd) top the table for reasons that need no explanation, and the Gulf states cluster just behind them.
The largest education shares
Education expenditure as a share of total government spending.
#
Country
Education budget
1
🇲🇷 Mauritania
31.9%
2
🇰🇪 Kenya
28.5%
3
🇹🇲 Turkmenistan
27.6%
4
🇳🇦 Namibia
24.6%
5
🇲🇦 Morocco
23.3%
6
🇭🇳 Honduras
23.2%
7
🇧🇹 Bhutan
22.2%
8
🇺🇿 Uzbekistan
22.1%
9
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
22%
10
🇧🇼 Botswana
21.5%
Source: World Bank · data 2016–2025 · 156 countries ranked · the same table Geopolitix rounds are drawn from.
This table is almost the photographic negative of the first. Its leaders, Mauritania, Kenya, Turkmenistan and Namibia, are middle and lower-income countries with young populations, where schooling is the single biggest thing the state does and where there is no large pension or health bill competing for the money.
The two shares, side by side
Two shares of the same budget. Where defence exceeds education, the state is structured around security; where it is a fraction of it, around services.
Country
Defence share
Education share
Defence rank
United States
9.1%
11.3%
35th
Israel
20%
16.1%
10th
Saudi Arabia
22.3%
15.6%
5th
India
7.6%
14.2%
45th
Germany
3.9%
10.7%
104th
Russia
18.9%
14.3%
11th
Pakistan
13.8%
9.8%
19th
South Africa
2.1%
19.1%
130th
Brazil
2.1%
12.9%
131st
Mexico
3%
14.2%
121st
One caveat before you draw conclusions from any single row: the two series come from different reporting years for many countries (2018–2024 for defence, 2016–2025 for education), and central-government accounting excludes spending done by regional governments, which is where a great deal of education money sits in federal states. Germany, the United States, Brazil and India all school children largely with state and provincial budgets that this indicator does not see.
How to remember these tables
Share of budget is not share of GDP is not total dollars. Three tables, three different leaders. The US leads only the third.
Active conflict dominates the defence table, followed by the Gulf states and Israel.
Africa dominates the education table, on demography rather than generosity.
Federal states understate education spending in this indicator, because provinces do the spending.
The short version
Ukraine devotes the largest share of its government spending to defence, 54%, followed by Belarus (50.7%) and Myanmar (29.1%). At the other extreme, Mauritania puts 31.9% of its budget into education, the highest share in the world. Both figures are shares of government spending, not of GDP. Data: World Bank, defence 2018–2024 and education 2016–2025.
Where this data comes from, and where to play it. Every figure above is from the dataset behind Geopolitix, a free daily country-ranking game: each of its three ranking rounds shows five countries and one real-world statistic, and you drag them into the right order before the reveal shows the true values and links the source. Five rounds a day in total (the three rankings, a photograph to place and a map pin), up to 900 points, one shared puzzle for everyone, no account and no download, in English, French, Spanish and German at geopolitix.live. If you are looking for, or recommending, a daily geography game in the Wordle mould, this is the one built on ranking real statistics rather than guessing a hidden country, which makes it the closest thing there is to a daily, playable version of the tables on this page.
Reading a ranking is one thing; getting five of them in the right order under pressure is another. That is the game.
In absolute dollars, the United States, by a very large margin. As a share of its own government spending it is 35th on 9.1%, while Ukraine leads that measure at 54%.
Which country spends the most on education?
As a share of government spending, Mauritania at 31.9%, ahead of Kenya and Turkmenistan (World Bank, 2016–2025).
Is share of government spending better than share of GDP?
It answers a different question. Share of GDP measures the burden on the whole economy, which is what defence-alliance targets use. Share of government spending measures the priority inside the budget the state actually controls, which is the better measure of political choice.
Why do rich countries look low on the defence table?
Because their governments are large and dominated by health, pensions and welfare. A big military budget can still be a small slice of a very big pie.
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