Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1997Data year 1997
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP)Higher is better — rank 1 leadsPublished by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
28 editions (1996–2023), 52 to 102 countries. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP, counting business, government, higher education and non-profit spending together. The standard measure of how much of an economy is aimed at producing new knowledge, and SDG indicator 9.5.1. ⚠ It counts money in, not discoveries out — Israel leads 2023 at 6.35%, which says what the country spends and nothing about what it found. ⚠ Editions reporting fewer than 50 countries are not written — that drops UIS’s trailing stub year, which opens with a handful of early reporters, and any thin historical year. ⚠ UIS ranks nobody, so no rank is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the score and labelled as ours.
Research and Development Spending 1997 — UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Cite as: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. UIS Data Browser. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
UIS release 20260507-91260335. Read from the UIS API at full precision, as published — nothing is rounded here. ⚠ Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, so anything derived from it carries the same ShareAlike obligation. UIS publishes no rank, so none is stored and none is derived here.
69 rows × 3 columns · imported from the publisher’s published data file on
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| Country | ISO Code | Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP) |
|---|---|---|
| Sweden | SWE | 3.273 |
| Japan | JPN | 2.722 |
| Israel | ISR | 2.695 |
| Finland | FIN | 2.623 |
| United States | USA | 2.477 |
| Germany | DEU | 2.182 |
| South Korea | KOR | 2.174 |
| France | FRA | 2.152 |
| Denmark | DNK | 1.892 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 1.842 |
| Belgium | BEL | 1.810 |
| Iceland | ISL | 1.798 |
| Austria | AUT | 1.663 |
| Canada | CAN | 1.614 |
| Norway | NOR | 1.594 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 1.537 |
| Singapore | SGP | 1.416 |
| Slovenia | SVN | 1.249 |
| Ireland | IRL | 1.243 |
| Ukraine | UKR | 1.192 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 1.056 |
| Slovakia | SVK | 1.046 |
| Russia | RUS | 1.044 |
| Italy | ITA | 0.985 |
| Czechia | CZE | 0.983 |
| Moldova | MDA | 0.807 |
| Spain | ESP | 0.778 |
| Belarus | BLR | 0.730 |
| Hungary | HUN | 0.697 |
| India | IND | 0.687 |
| Serbia | SRB | 0.671 |
| Poland | POL | 0.641 |
| China | CHN | 0.635 |
| Romania | ROU | 0.575 |
| Portugal | PRT | 0.564 |
| Lithuania | LTU | 0.534 |
| South Africa | ZAF | 0.527 |
| Türkiye | TUR | 0.492 |
| Bulgaria | BGR | 0.465 |
| Greece | GRC | 0.443 |
| Argentina | ARG | 0.420 |
| Cuba | CUB | 0.402 |
| Latvia | LVA | 0.377 |
| Azerbaijan | AZE | 0.370 |
| North Macedonia | MKD | 0.359 |
| Uruguay | URY | 0.350 |
| Georgia | GEO | 0.342 |
| Panama | PAN | 0.318 |
| Bolivia | BOL | 0.316 |
| Costa Rica | CRI | 0.296 |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | 0.293 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 0.275 |
| Mexico | MEX | 0.264 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 0.205 |
| Egypt | EGY | 0.198 |
| Kyrgyzstan | KGZ | 0.194 |
| Armenia | ARM | 0.187 |
| Madagascar | MDG | 0.183 |
| Burkina Faso | BFA | 0.181 |
| Mongolia | MNG | 0.168 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 0.156 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | TTO | 0.116 |
| Thailand | THA | 0.102 |
| Peru | PER | 0.084 |
| Nicaragua | NIC | 0.065 |
| Ecuador | ECU | 0.063 |
| Myanmar | MMR | 0.060 |
| Bermuda | BMU | 0.059 |
| Zambia | ZMB | 0.007 |