Military Personnel and Spending

Bastian Herre; Max Roser; Esteban Ortiz-Ospina; Hannah Ritchie; Edouard Mathieu

Militaries — heavily armed and highly organized forces — can be used defensively to protect a country’s people against external and internal threats. They can also be deployed during emergencies, such as natural disasters, to evacuate affected populations and provide them shelter, food, and medicine.

But militaries can also be used offensively to attack other countries, maintain domestic power, and suppress opposition. Even when they are not actively deployed, militaries may divert resources from other public priorities, such as spending on healthcare and education.

On this page, you can find global data and visualizations on military personnel and spending.

Interactive Charts on Military Personnel and Spending

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Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:

Bastian Herre, Max Roser, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Hannah Ritchie and Edouard Mathieu (2013) - "Military Personnel and Spending". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://staging-owid.netlify.app/military-personnel-spending' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-military-personnel-spending,
    author = {Bastian Herre and Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Hannah Ritchie and Edouard Mathieu},
    title = {Military Personnel and Spending},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2013},
    note = {https://staging-owid.netlify.app/military-personnel-spending}
}

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