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What you should know about this indicator

  • The Public Finances in Modern History database is compiled by the International Monetary Fund from a wide range of historical sources and documents 200 years of government revenue, spending, deficits, and debt.
  • Depending on the country and year, the data may cover the central government only or the general government, which also includes state and local governments. Companion indicators in the dataset flag which coverage applies to each observation.
Government spending as share of GDP
IMF
The sum of all the money spent by the government on goods and services, as a percentage of GDP. It includes interest paid on government debt.
Source
International Monetary Fund (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 12, 2026
Next expected update
June 2027
Date range
1800–2024
Unit
% of GDP

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Monetary Fund – Public Finances in Modern History

The Public Finances in Modern History Database documents two-hundred years of the history of budget deficits and government debts. The current version covers 151 countries over the period 1800–2024, subject to data availability. These data were assembled from a wide array of historical sources, which are documented in the Appendix of Data Sources. The initial database, which covered 55 countries, was analyzed in “A Modern History of Fiscal Prudence and Profligacy”, Journal of Monetary Economics, 2015, Vol. 76, pp. 55–70, by Paolo Mauro, Rafael Romeu, Ariel Binder, and Asad Zaman.

A distinguishing feature of the database is the presence of primary balance data, which is the difference between a government's revenues and its non-interest expenditures, alongside the corresponding government debt data. The primary balance is the most accurate reflection of government fiscal policy decisions. We invite you to explore these data through the interactive graphs below and take in a glimpse of the history of deficits and debts around the world.

Retrieved on
June 12, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/datasets/FPP
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Monetary Fund (2025). Public Finances in Modern History

The Public Finances in Modern History Database documents two-hundred years of the history of budget deficits and government debts. The current version covers 151 countries over the period 1800–2024, subject to data availability. These data were assembled from a wide array of historical sources, which are documented in the Appendix of Data Sources. The initial database, which covered 55 countries, was analyzed in “A Modern History of Fiscal Prudence and Profligacy”, Journal of Monetary Economics, 2015, Vol. 76, pp. 55–70, by Paolo Mauro, Rafael Romeu, Ariel Binder, and Asad Zaman.

A distinguishing feature of the database is the presence of primary balance data, which is the difference between a government's revenues and its non-interest expenditures, alongside the corresponding government debt data. The primary balance is the most accurate reflection of government fiscal policy decisions. We invite you to explore these data through the interactive graphs below and take in a glimpse of the history of deficits and debts around the world.

Retrieved on
June 12, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/datasets/FPP
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Monetary Fund (2025). Public Finances in Modern History

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Government spending as share of GDP”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Bertha Rohenkohl, Pablo Arriagada, and Max Roser (2016) - “Government Spending”. Data adapted from International Monetary Fund. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260612-140614/grapher/historical-gov-spending-gdp.html [online resource] (archived on June 12, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Monetary Fund (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Monetary Fund (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Government spending as share of GDP – IMF” [dataset]. International Monetary Fund, “Public Finances in Modern History” [original data]. Retrieved June 12, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260612-140614/grapher/historical-gov-spending-gdp.html (archived on June 12, 2026).

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