Relative Size of US Military Spending, 1940--2003

Introduction

The graphs and tables below depict the history of the relative size of US military spending. Relative size is measured here in two ways:

• In each year, how much was spent on the military compared to the size of the US economy?
• In each year, how much was spent on the military compared to other discretionary outlays in the federal budget?

Please note that

• "federal spending" refers to outlays;
• "military spending" refers to "national defense" spending (budget function 050), which may include spending outside of the Department of Defense; and,
• years are fiscal years.

US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003

In the graph and table below, the measure of the size of the economy used is GDP (gross domestic product). US military spending is reported as a percentage of US GDP.

Graph 1: US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003

Data source

The data were taken from reference [1].

Table 1: US military spending as a percentage of GDP, 1940--2003

Data source

The data in Table 1 are the same as those in Graph 1 and are also taken from reference [1].

US military spending as a percentage of discretionary outlays, 1962--2003

In the graph and table below, US military spending is reported as a percentage of discretionary outlays. (Technical note: total military spending data used here is restricted to discretionary spending, unlike that used in the comparison with GDP above. The two amounts are very close, however.)

Graph 2: US military spending as a percentage of discretionary spending, 1962--2003

Data source

The data were taken from reference [2].

Table 2: US military spending as a percentage of discretionary spending, 1962--2003

Data source

The data in Table 2 are the same as those in Graph 2 and are also taken from reference [2].

References

[1]	"Table 3.1: outlays by superfunction and function: 1940--2009," in Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005 (2004), Washington, pp. 45--52
[2]	"Public Budget Database, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005" (2004) (database)