HUMANITYVECTOR
Menu

R&D expenditure as share of GDP

Observed

Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP.

Ingestedfrom World BankfreshJSON export
Current value, World
2.6percent of GDP
period 2023
Geography
World (WLD)
Observation date
2023
Unit
percent of GDP
Frequency
annual
Ingested
2026-09-07 05:31 UTC
1-year change+0.0262improving+1.02%2022 to 2023from 2.57 to 2.6 percent of GDP
10-year trend+2.78% per yearimproving+31.50%2013 to 2023compound annual growth rate; total +0.6222 percent of GDP, from 1.98 to 2.6 percent of GDP
Historical series

R&D expenditure as share of GDP, World

Observed
1.822.22.42.61996200020052010201520202023PERCENT OF GDP2.6
28 observations, 1996 to 2023latest point emphasised
Data table (28 rows)
R&D expenditure as share of GDP, World: 28 observations from 1996 to 2023, values from 1.92 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Latest 2.6 percent of GDP in 2023. Full data table below.
PeriodValue (percent of GDP)Source revisionIngested at
20232.59742026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20222.57122026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20212.52282026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20202.45612026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20192.26342026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20182.21822026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20172.1422026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20162.14872026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20152.10432026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20142.08662026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20131.97522026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20122.01292026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20111.98172026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20101.99892026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20092.01392026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20081.97782026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20071.92482026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20061.95952026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20051.94742026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20041.96742026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20032.01592026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20022.02642026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20012.06222026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
20002.0452026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
19992.04652026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
19981.97182026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
19971.96272026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
19961.96492026-07-132026-09-07 05:31 UTC
195 geographies have observations for this metric
World Bank, World Development Indicators, series GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS
Definition

What this measures

Gross domestic expenditures on research and development (R&D), expressed as a percent of GDP. They include both capital and current expenditures in the four main sectors: business enterprise, government, higher education and private non-profit. R&D covers basic research, applied research, and experimental development. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, compiled by the World Bank.

Direction
higher is better
Geography level
world, regions, countries
Slug
rd-spending-share
Science & Knowledge

Related metrics

All Science & Knowledge metrics

Provenance and methodologysource, series, ingestion, revisions
Classification
Observedpublished by the cited source, ingested without transformation
Source organization
World Bank, World Development Indicators
Series ID
GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZSlast fetch: ok
Source links
License and attribution
Approved with attribution
World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0
Terms of use
Last source update
2026-07-13(source revision label as published by the provider)
Last ingestion
last successful runfresh
Last run
success2026-09-07 05:31 UTC
Parser version
world-bank-v2/1.0.0
Methodology version
1.0
Quality and confidence
Country coverage is uneven and the world aggregate depends on which economies report in a given year. Publication lags of two to three years are normal.
Ingestion rejects values outside 0 to 20 percent of GDP.
28 periods with values for this geography, 1996 to 2023.
Revisions
Values reported for the latest period (2023) by each source revision ingested. Earlier rows are never deleted; the newest ingested row is shown as current.
Source revisionValue (percent of GDP)Ingested atStatus
2026-07-132.59742026-09-07 05:31 UTCcurrent
No superseded rows for this geography: every period has been ingested once.