A data set on military ("defense") expenditures for NATO members from 2014 to 2025.
Format
A data frame with 384 observations on the following 6 variables.
statean English country name for the state
iso3ca three-character ISO code for the state
joinedthe year the state joined NATO
yearthe observation year
defexpdefense expenditures in millions constant (2021) USD
gdpgross domestic product (GDP) in millions constant (2021) USD
Details
Observations for 2024 and 2025 are considered estimates based on information made available prior to 3 June 2025.
Iceland has no armed forces and is thus NA for defense expenditures. Its NATO contributions have been more about its location and strategic use of its territory for European (and, thus, Icelandic) security. It also makes financial contributions and contributions of civilian personnel to the organization, but those do not reflect in traditional measures of defense spending (at least as reported by NATO).
In cases where a fiscal year spans two calendar years, the calendar year with the most months is considered the referent year. For example, the 2021-22 Canadian fiscal year ran from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022. Most of those months were in 2021 and thus the Canadian fiscal year would count toward 2021. The American 2021-22 fiscal year ran from 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2022. More months of the fiscal year were in 2022 and, thus, observations collected from the U.S. for that fiscal year would count toward 2022.