Total government expenditure per person in selected countries

This chart shows total public spending per person across all levels of government in OECD countries. To allow for cross-country comparability, these estimates are expressed in current international dollars — a metric that adjusts for differences in living costs between countries.

As we can see, cross-country differences are also large here. In Mexico, the government spends a fraction per person than countries like Norway.

See the data tab for a broader set of countries.