Government expense vs. Human capital (PWT)
Fades after adjusting for income
Across 121 countries, Government expense and Human capital (PWT) rise and fall together at r = +0.55 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.26, which could easily be chance (q = 0.060, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.
Comparing countries across the middle half of human capital (PWT), 2.39 to 3.36 points, government expense is 8.52% of GDP higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 6.28% of GDP.
Link before adjusting (r)+0.550p = 6.1e-11 · 121 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.255p = 0.005 · likely range [+0.08, +0.42]
p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.046 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.060across 18,622 pairs
How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.
Government expense · % of GDPlink with income +0.44 · moderate
Human capital (PWT) · index (1 = no schooling)link with income +0.82 · proxy
“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.
Every country as a dot
best-fit line line after adjusting
Four ways to measure the link
| Method | r | p | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (Pearson), not adjusted | +0.550 | 6.1e-11 | 121 |
| By rank (Spearman), not adjusted | +0.558 | 2.9e-11 | 121 |
| Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income | +0.255 | 0.005 | 121 |
| By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income | +0.233 | 0.011 | 121 |
The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 121 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.295 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.222 (without UKR) to +0.284 (without TJK). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: UKR (-0.033).
Within each region
Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| East Asia & Pacific | 14 | +0.49 | |
| Europe & Central Asia | 40 | +0.05 | |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 20 | +0.33 | |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 30 | +0.16 |
By income third
If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Poorest third | 41 | +0.14 | |
| Middle third | 40 | +0.36 | |
| Richest third | 40 | +0.02 |
By largest religious group
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Christians | 82 | +0.24 | |
| Muslims | 21 | -0.04 |
By last European coloniser
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| France | 13 | +0.11 | |
| Never a European colony | 12 | -0.05 | |
| Spain | 17 | -0.01 | |
| United Kingdom | 37 | +0.11 |
By official ideology
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nationalist | 16 | +0.09 | |
| No strong official ideology | 85 | +0.21 |
By party system
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| A few parties banned | 15 | +0.19 | |
| No parties banned | 95 | +0.19 |
Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.222 after dropping 1 countries.
Two series, one country
Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.
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Over time, within countries
Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 34years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.
Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.042, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose government expense moved did not tend to see their human capital (PWT) move with it.
Across countries (adjusted)+0.255for comparison
Within countries+0.045each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.042q = 0.224 · 125 countries
Year-on-year changes-0.001q = 0.975
Read with care.
- Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.
3,127 country-years (one country in one year), 125 countries, 1990–2023, about 25 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 8% for Government expense, 62% for Human capital (PWT). The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.
Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.
With one measure years behind the other
Same year (lag 0): +0.042. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.
The data
% of GDP | index (1 = no schooling) | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ukraine UKR | 65.6% | 3.32 | 2023 |
| Greece GRC | 47.3% | 3.24 | 2023 |
| Italy ITA | 47.3% | 3.27 | 2023 |
| France FRA | 47.3% | 3.31 | 2023 |
| Austria AUT | 46% | 3.45 | 2023 |
| Finland FIN | 44.9% | 3.6 | 2023 |
| Slovenia SVN | 42.9% | 3.66 | 2023 |
| Hungary HUN | 42.4% | 3.55 | 2022, 2023 |
| Luxembourg LUX | 42.2% | 3.47 | 2023 |
| United Kingdom GBR | 41.2% | 3.85 | 2023 |
| Lesotho LSO | 40.2% | 2.02 | 2022, 2023 |
| Netherlands NLD | 40% | 3.46 | 2023 |
| Slovak Republic SVK | 39.8% | 3.89 | 2022, 2023 |
| Belgium BEL | 39.7% | 3.17 | 2022, 2023 |
| Poland POL | 39.1% | 3.49 | 2023 |
World Bank, World Development Indicators
Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table", American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, www.ggdc.net/pwt. Data: Penn World Table version 11.0, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, doi:10.34894/FABVLR.
Sources
Government expense
Government expense (% of GDP)
World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly
Total central government spending, as a share of GDP: buying, payments to people, subsidies and interest together. From the IMF's Government Finance Statistics. It is the fuller measure of government size, but it covers fewer countries. It counts central government only, so a country with large state and local budgets looks low. About forty fewer countries report it than report government consumption. No "better" direction is set.
Human capital (PWT)
Human capital index, from years of schooling (Penn World Table)
Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen · via DataverseNL · CC BY 4.0 · updated irregular (new versions every few years)
"Human capital" means the skills and knowledge workers bring to their jobs. This index measures it from schooling alone. It starts from how many years adults spent in school, then counts the early years for more than the later ones, following studies of how much higher pay tends to be with each extra year. A score of 1 means no schooling; the US is about 3.8. It uses the same schooling figures as mean years of schooling, so the two are close by construction. For that reason it is left out of the education score, which already counts years of schooling.
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2012–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 18,622 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated V-Dem v16; V-Party v2. How the country data works · explore Government expense and Human capital (PWT)
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Government expense changes Human capital (PWT), or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Government expense or Human capital (PWT)
- Government expense vs Informal employment before -0.52 → after adjusting -0.46
- Government expense vs Political rights (FH) before -0.51 → after adjusting -0.44
- Human capital (PWT) vs One-person households before +0.72 → after adjusting +0.42
- Free and fair elections vs Government expense before +0.58 → after adjusting +0.42
- Human capital (PWT) vs Population 65+ before +0.76 → after adjusting +0.41
- Human capital (PWT) vs PISA maths before +0.70 → after adjusting +0.38
- Electoral democracy vs Government expense before +0.54 → after adjusting +0.38
- Governance score vs Government expense before +0.56 → after adjusting +0.38