Countries are spending more than ever on research and development, but the fields they fund vary depending on national priorities. And it is not just the research reputation that matters when choosing whether to move abroad — cost of living and quality-of-life are factors too.

How science is spread

There is no doubt of China’s dominance when it comes to publishing research in high-quality journals. Its weighted fractional count (WFC; a score used by the Nature Index, see description below) was 5% higher in May 2015 to April 2016 compared with 2014. With the exception of New Zealand, the WFC of the other Asia-Pacific countries profiled fell.

Subject strengths

China devoted more of its research efforts to physics and less to health and medical sciences in 2015 than any of the other countries profiled, according to the number of academic journal articles in the Scopus database. Articles on boundaries between subjects can be counted more than once, potentially distorting the relative subject proportions in these charts.

Funding over time

R&D funding as a proportion of GDP has grown most rapidly in South Korea and China since 2000, but has remained consistently low in India and New Zealand.

Credit: OECD/UNESCO

Spending per researcher

Of the profiled countries, Singapore spends the most on R&D per researcher. Figures are the most recent available and are normalized for purchasing power. The United States and United Kingdom are included for comparison.

Credit: UNESCO

Research quality

Singapore comes out on top for national research quality. Quality is based on the percentage of each country’s biological and physical science articles in the Scopus database that make it into the Nature Index.

Researcher density

South Korea has more of its workforce engaged in research than any of the other profiled countries. As a proportion of the working population, South Korea has around 30 times more researchers than India, according to the latest data available.

Credit: UNESCO

Cost of living

Major cities in Australia are the most expensive places to live among the countries profiled, on the basis of an index of the relative ability of people on average salaries to buy goods and services.

Credit: Numbeo

Life satisfaction

When people of 157 countries were asked to rate life satisfaction on a scale of zero to ten, New Zealanders and Australians were the happiest people of the seven profiled countries. Denmark (the happiest) and Burundi (the least happy) are included for comparison.

Credit: J. F. Helliwell et al. in World Happiness Report 2016 (UN, 2016)

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