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You might notice something when looking at the above chart. Many of the countries that top 2% of GDP in spending on research and development (R&D) – whether it be France and Germany or Japan and the United States – are among the world’s largest and most industrialized economies. Even China, which is one development category below, spends a notably high amount of its massive economy on R&D.

No doubt, to be a major player in the world today you have to be at the forefront of emerging technologies and innovation — and dedicated public funding is a big part of that.

Enter: Brazil.

South America’s giant is leading its neighbors in terms of R&D expenditure and it’s not even close. Brazil spends the equivalent of roughly 1.2% of its economy—which doesn’t seem like much, until you realize that Brazil’s economy is worth over $1.6T, making its investment come out to nearly $20B each year. That’s roughly the size of Haiti’s entire GDP or close to McDonald’s total annual revenue! As the largest public spender in the region by far, Brazil’s closest peers by this metric are developed European countries rather than its own neighbors.

Brazil’s R&D expenditure takes the form of research done in world-renowned public universities such as the University of São Paulo or the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. It can also be seen in the consistent modernization of Brazil’s armed forces and the scientific and medical breakthroughs propelled by government-funded private companies. From AI and vaccine development to sustainable agriculture and renewable energy research, Brazilians are at the forefront of regional innovation.

Public R&D has been tied to greater growth and productivity for countries and their private sectors, so Brazilian policymakers have got the right idea. Now comes the tough part: making sure that the public funding goes towards sectors that maximize growth and minimize inequities. After all, scientific breakthroughs and technological advances are not just cool—they can eradicate diseases and improve the lives of everyday citizens. For proof, just ask the thousands of families impacted by the 2016 revelation by Brazilian medical researchers that the Zika virus could lead to brain damage for infants.

While there remains work to be done if Brazil wants to match its peers in London or Tokyo, it’s worth recalling that every country currently investing more in R&D is also quite richer. Brazil may have a long way to go in making sure the benefits of development and public expenditure are spread equally—but more than any other Latin American country, it’s well on its way.

Source: UNDP, World Bank
Tools: Rawgraphs, Affinity Designer

That graph makes me think that research spending does not improve HDI.

According to the graph, about half of latin american countries spend considerably less on research than Brazil does, but have higher HDI anyway.

It looks like having a higher HDI simply allows countries to contribute more money to research - which some of them choose to do and others don't.

I believe there might be a trend

The plateau after 1% is quite interesting, wish policymakers would delve deep into data like this.

Yep. Remember, every person that confuses correlation and causation ends up dead

What's up with the key? Is it just random? That needs to be fixed, it's not beautiful.

Where do you find graphs / info like these? I think they're satisfying especially for Latin America! :D

Interesting graph. I wonder if this is a “what comes forest, chicken versus egg?” phenomenon. Correlated but not causal, perhaps? Those poor countries don’t have sufficient money for basic needs, infrastructure, law enforcement, etc., so they may not even have money for R&D when basic human needs are not being met.

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Before I read anything I thought the graph was of the east coast of the US and Canada

There is not direct correlation, there are historical facts. Many countries in green were pioneers or grew during the industrial revolution from way back like 100-150 years ago. They are now rich countries and they can invest profits in more R&D. Latinoamerican countries have to do a lot more than increasing a couple of percentage points of their small GDP in R&D, the gap is huge, probably decades and economical miracles will be needed.

Think it’s alphabetical

But correlation is still a necessary condition for causation. Necessary, not sufficient. So to die, you first need to live. Does life cause death ? Until someone lives eternally, we can’t really tell…

The order of the legend got my brain in a pretzel 🥨

Being rich and war free helps people develop. Incredible

Why do some circles have flags?

High > low > medium > very high

Somebody had a stroke making this

I had to read the title 3 times.

To focus on Lat Am countries

Yes it’s complicated. If you are a petro state, or rich in some natural resources. Then you don’t have to spend so much on RD to live a cushy life.

It can also be hard to reap the rewards from RD investment. A lot of high tech industries go through several consolidations and only the very top can remain and control the market. For example semiconductor, aerospace and etc. Being okayish doesn’t bring much in return in too many industries.

>Being okayish doesn’t bring much in return in too many industries.

I think this is a major factor. There's no prize for second place when it comes to R&D. Especially if you don't have the infrastructure to actually make use of the R you're D'ing.

>Brazil’s R&D expenditure takes the form of research done in world-renowned public universities such as the University of São Paulo or the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. It can also be seen in the consistent modernization of Brazil’s armed forces and the scientific and medical breakthroughs propelled by government-funded private companies. From AI and vaccine development to sustainable agriculture and renewable energy research, Brazilians are at the forefront of regional innovation.

Since Michel Temer's and then Bolsonaro's government.. this is not a reality anymore.

The two leading countries aren't on the graph- Israel at 5.44% and South Korea at 4.81% in 2020.

what year was this graph made and from what years does the data for it comes from?

It's 2023.. I'm pretty sure the data used in this graph is very different now, after Temer and Bolsonaro's governments. Both cut A LOT of R&D investments in areas as health, education, academic research, technology and industrialization in general.

( I'm Brazilian)

Big nope for the latter part actually. The two leading countries aren't on the graph- Israel at 5.44% and South Korea at 4.81% in 2020, neither is known for their peaceful existence.

I wouldn’t say all industries have no place for the second place, but yeah this is true for a decent many

You have have causation without correlation.

Watch a geography documentary about LA until they have flying cars (R&D), there is little practical approach to the modernization of highway infrastructure.

Research alone won’t change or improve a country. There’s fundamental changes to be made that don’t need research on. I think researching can help bring countries a bit further to an extent. Sweden for example has been doing quite strong in this area for a while. They have also designed better rehabilitation prisons as they have made great progress with the fundamentals. The prison system changing wouldn’t drastically improve its HDI but through research they’ve learned how to better their communities.

Research doesn’t mean action either. I could study something my whole life, learn great amounts, even make discoveries but if I do nothing with the information there is no impact.

Yeah, i don't think so either. Brazil and Ireland spends almost the same amount on R&D, but Ireland has .95 and Brazil .75...

It was obviously a generalised comment. Even so, SK is clearly war free for all intents and purposes. Israel is a hot mess that is an exception but even there the average person can go about their lives with barely more consideration than the west had during terror attacks.

That legend and my OCD are not going well together

This seems like bs to me. R&D only really helps already highly developedto eek out that last bit of progress. The problems with most of the under developed countries are much more foundational than anything else.

1. I am frustrated by the legend which has proceeds up linearly from low to high, then loops down to very high at the bottom. Edit: nevermind, I’m just confused by the legend being jumbled.

2. As others have stated, the graph doesn’t seem to demonstrate causality. Seems like if you flipped the independent and dependent variables, it might look like a function (ie, highly developed countries facilitate more R&D, versus more R&D facilitates high development)

That being said, history does point to innovations and development being the egg and highly developed nations the chicken. With that historical context in mind, maybe this graph shows raw $$$ amount spent on innovation as of today isn’t the best predictor, as shown by the massive column of low-high developed nations which seem to have no correlation with R&D and Development

Anyone have an idea of what else is happening other than those two factors? How does Chile get better results from the same expenditure as Costa Rica or Mexico?

I am flabbergasted by Saudi Arabia's HDI. What do they take into account? Memorizing the Quoran? The discrimination against women and minorities?

I don’t like that the Colours are also indicative of the y axis value, you’re basically using two seperate metrics to convey one piece of information. Perhaps if you changed the colour to correspond to the continent, it would be more useful. Or the size as a indicator of population might be nice as well.

Well seeing as flying cars may be on the market soon we might not need new or existing roads in 30-50 years if the price and tech get better

It seems like r and d is a luxury that countries spend on after they have solved most of their human development issues. Its much easier to just not spend the money and still benefit from the discovery

Well, of course that even a reasonably designated investment in research and development will not have an immediate impact in HDI and will not be the only factor contributing to it. Do you know how long have Brazil been investing this much? Or how reasonable this expenditure is? If any, from this graph, Brazil looks more like an outlier. Similar to China, whose HDI have been actually improving a lot during last decades and this correlates well with its R&D level of investment. Not the HDI number itself but the rate of improvement of it.

I think that the US and Europe have been more at war than most of Latin America during the past century, right?

>Not the HDI number itself but the rate of improvement of it.

That would probably be a more useful piece of information to graph.

It's alphabetical which is clearly the wrong ordering

This is a little misleading. A lot of corporations fund research so they can skewe results in their favor so they pay a lot in the US. Big oil knew about climate change long before it was an issue, but the corporations buried it. Big Tobacco knew cigarettes were unhealthy, they spent a lot of money to bury it. Aaron Swarts did a lot of research on this sort of thing and it eventually cost him his life, which is unfortunate because he is possibly the greatest mind of the 21st century.

> It looks like having a higher HDI simply allows countries to contribute more money to research - which some of them choose to do and others don't.

It could be even more complicated than that. R&D could lead to higher HDI, but there could be structural problems that prevent both of them from increasing. Governments in now HDI countries may struggle with state capacity to collect taxes/revenue and not be able to subsidize research and are also not able to provide basic rule of law and order for development. There may be problems with corruption and private R&D might not have any returns because other politically connected businesses will steal their innovations with impunity.

I'd be willing to believe that R&D/investments in technology can cause higher development. You can look at the late developing east Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan) as a possible example. The problem is that most poorer countries have problems that prevent development or sustained investment in R&D.

Though only in a dataset of 1, right? Or is there something I'm missing?

In places that have basically 0 effect on any of their ppl yeh. While the US and UK were at war with Iraq there was a fairly noticable war freeness in the US and UK compared to in Iraq for example.

Brazil is a much larger country and also much more diverse. We have wildly different regions with wildly different histories.

The São Paulo state, for example, has an area comparable to the UK and a HDI of roughly 0.83, which is roughly on par with the other South American countries.

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I see. Thanks

Chile has been (recently) more politically stable which attracts more investment into the local economy. They've also got an abundance of natural resources (#1 copper exporter) and invest heavily in education.

The chart leaves off the two countries with the highest rates of R&D, Korea (4.8%) and Israel (5.4%). Both would be off the right edge of the chart. The two have followed similar tracks: rapid economic expansion with a heavy emphasis on technology. Steadily improving human development.

Both realized that they are too small to compete on economies of scale with bigger countries, but they can compete in education and high tech. I think they are the economic model to emulate.

How does violent intervention from the worlds most powerful militaries and harsh economic embargos factor into this chart? Wheres the dots for every coupd socialist leader, stolen precious resources eh?

I've heard this but not entirely how it would work, care to elaborate? Is it because there may be another different variable which cancels out the causality effect leaving non observable correlation?

While this is an interesting graph (minus this disastrous key), this title is definitely misleading. You're implying causation from this correlation, but I would argue it is not quite so simple. As is usually the case, it is much more expensive to be poor than rich. LATAM countries spend more on basic infrastructure than high HDI counterparts, and the efficiency of that spending is less because of graft and lower economies of scale. While the graph seems to be arguing that rich countries get rich by spending money on research, historically it would be more accurate to say rich countries remain rich because they have money to spend on tech development.

I mean... I think their are other significant contributors to this

So many posts on here with absolutely non-sensical ways of displaying information

Erm.

Societal well-being tends to be high in countries with with income.

High income strongly implies available spend for education and research.

Is this chart significantly different from just plotting wealth levels?

This is more data is ugly. Terrible and misleading conclusion.

I thought I had a stroke reading it.

Ordem e progreso

First is clearly unreachable, they gotta try the second harder.

That’s one case, yes. Think of a situation where the causal effect is only responsible for a small portion of the observed outcomes, so the gross correlation could even run backwards due to other factors despite known causation in part of the sample.

Or there could be other causal factors stemming from the original cause that push back the observed correlation which need to be accounted for. Certain genes are known to cause breast cancer at such a high rate that everyone who screens positive for them might choose to get double mastectomies, causing breast cancer rates to actually fall among that group. I don’t think this is actually true, but it’s a hypothetical example of a case where no or even reverse correlation might exist despite known and strong causation.

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No, you can have it in datasets of any size. If X causes Y, but also it just happens that in your dataset there's some other factor Z that causes (not Y) and happens to correlate strongly with X (in your dataset). For example, if exposure to some substance causes cancer, but people who are exposed to that substance tend to be exposed to vast quantities of it that kill them immediately (thereby preventing the vast majority of them from living long enough to develop cancer), you'd have a definite causation, but no (or even a reversed) correlation.

TIL war-torn Iraq has better HDI than India and Morocco.

It’s also a great example of development with little to no exportable natural resources. You’re not dependent on climate, or your neighbours. An R&D industry also enables startups, which leads to global companies forming that provide unique solutions you can’t get elsewhere giving you leverage on the world stage. Large companies start opening HQs in your country.

Aye. Wealthy countries can spend on r&d and initiatives that improve HDI.

This is a good example of why I think any visualization of correlation should include the actual Pearson correlation value. I don't think the correlation here is a strong as the title makes it out to be (wouldn't be suprised if < 0.5), even setting aside concerns about whether it is spurious.

Seems like there is not a lot more to gain after having spent more than 1%.

Ha ha, I think you are right. Weird.

Perhaps very high

That's amazing, thanks! Do you happen to know any good subreddit about stats and whatnot?

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Rich countries are able to spend a lot more money on research, this isn't surprising.

I almost had a stroke reading it!

USA got beaten in hdi by the people it nuked, the people who were 200 years behind the rest of the world just ~150 years ago

So Mexico spends half as much but is similarly developed to brazil? Talk about efficient

Wait really?

I would say the indigenous slaughter holds it back quite a bit

Do you have a link to that information or you are just repeating what you heard?

I do not fully agree. Take into account the fiscal pressure, here is the same. Another thing is that basic investigation is a waste of time if you do not have capacity of developing the possible outcomes from it. So, first develop more in what generates employment, and the current research should be only related to what generates employment and not in what generate easy papers (scientific articles). If not you end doing things that in the academic sense is good, but is of not use. You have to growth your GDP with good investment, it mean, good research too and then expand the expenses in research

Also 1,5 could be considered a good ratio for research investment, were with good strategies should work as good as more investment

you're welcome

168 humans killed makes you go from .95 to .75? I don't think this would be the main reason of why Brazil is in that position.

Not in particular to stats, no, but I also haven’t really looked for something like that.

Maybe the only place I know that might have a higher than usual concentration would be /r/slatestarcodex, which has some small overlapping interest in Bayesian reasoning and is generally more interested than other communities in using stats accurately rather than just as a tool to prove pre-determined point (sometimes).

People who take antidepressants are more depressed than people who do not. If we just look at the correlation, we might assume that antidepressants cause depression, but the opposite is true.

In this case, there's still a correlation, but the sign is the opposite of the true causal effect of taking antidepressants.

Alternatively, consider a car being driven over a hilly road at a constant speed. When the car is going uphill, it's burning more gas. There's no correlation between speed and gas consumption, but gas consumption increases speed.

R&D spending is higher for countries with higher GDP, surprise surprise

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It funny

What you've found here is a confounding variable. If you'd plot individual HDI versus the number of Rolex watches owned, I'd wager you'd find two distinct clusters. Does that mean that the gouvernamnent should focus on buying people gold watches, rather than healthcare?

No. This is because people who have their basic needs met start to focus on other shit.

Please stop posting irrelevant graphs like this.

Lolwhut. It's the other way around...

I'm screenshotting this

Relevant

Dogshit graph, pretty though

Wait how can France have a lower HDI than Malta ??

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Good point! I think was more considering this within the context of a single dataset, without outside knowledge. If I read your example correctly (please correct me if I don't), the dataset described above would not contain evidence of X causing Y or if the dampening effect of Z is not complete X would correlate with Y (though perhaps weakly). Thought there may again be something I'm missing ;)

Yeah, exactly.

It would be better a graph about how much they invested 10 or 20 years ago.