The given bar charts depict the rate of expense on Research and Development in the GDP of different countries, categorized by regions and income levels, in two distinctive years, namely 2017 and 2021.
Overall, it is clear that monetary allocation in the GDP of countries by region in 2021 accounted for the larger share than in 2017 in most countries, whereas the opposite trend was documented in spending by income where allocation in 2017 mostly surpassed its counterpart.
Looking first at the spending rates by region, Northern America had the highest R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP in both years. It stood at roughly 2.7% in 2017 and then reached 3.3% in 2021. Eastern Asia took the second place, with nearly 2.5% in 2017 and its figure in 2021 resembling that of North America in 2021. Additionally, Europe and World received nearly similar spending, with each accounting for over 1.8% in both years. In contrast, smaller regions like Oceania and Latin America and the Caribbean saw only slight decreases, with spending around 1.6% and 0.6% respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa remained the lowest at about 0.25% in both years.
Turning to spending rates by income, countries with high income rates received much higher R & D expenditure, with around 2.7% in 2017 and decreasing to well under 2.5% in 2021. Upper middle income countries ranked the third highest, with over 1.5% in 2017 and 1.4% in 2021. These figures were three times higher than that of lower middle income countries in both years. Meanwhile, the figures of Upper middle income countries were roughly the same in both years, with each year comprising roughly 1.5%. In contrast, Low income countries showed the larger rates of 2021 compared to 2017. Specifically, its figure recorded a slight increase from 0.2% in its initial year to 0.3% in 2021.