Shocking. That’s how one tabloid has described the news that the resettlement of 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next four years may cost the UK as much as £1.7bn.

More sympathetic voices might use another word: surprising.

It’s surprising that this resettlement programme should cost 325% more than the roughly £400m the Canadian government spent on the resettlement of more people – 25,000 – within a much shorter timeframe (six months). What accounts for this difference in cost?

The main thing is the method, says Stephen Hale, the head of Refugee Action, one of the main charities involved in the UK’s resettlement scheme. Of the 25,000 people resettled in Canada last winter, 43% of them were welcomed by private individuals, groups or churches. This meant that, although the Canadian government still covers the cost of the refugees’ education, welfare and healthcare, private individuals pay for their accommodation.

Whereas, says Hale, everyone resettled in the UK is being housed by the government. Well, almost everyone: two families are being hosted by private sponsors, one of them the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But is this the whole story? Canada is still covering all the costs of 14,000 refugees. For those people, Canada is getting better value for money than Britain, who will pay roughly £1.2bn for welcoming the same number of people. That’s the same amount as the US paid to resettle 70,000 people last year. Germany, meanwhile, is likely to spend around £17bn on the 800,000 asylum seekers who arrived last year.

No two countries’ circumstances are the same, and comparing them is not always fair or useful. But if we examine the cost of an individual refugee for each of these countries, we find that a refugee in Germany costs the state about £21,000, while in the US the figure is £17,000 and in Canada it’s £16,000. In Britain, it is expected to be £85,000.

However, as Hale argues, this is also the wrong way of discussing the resettlement of human beings. “There’s two ways to approach it – you either look at it as a burden and try to minimise costs, or you look at it as an investment, and the more you invest, the more they can contribute to the country.”

Research by dozens of academics appears to bear this out: in the short term, resettled refugees cost the state money. But in the long term, they create jobs, pay taxes and generally contribute to the economy of their new homes. In the clearest summary of this research, Philippe Legrain, a former adviser to the president of the European commission, found that refugees who arrived in Europe last year could repay spending on them almost twice over within just five years. While the absorption of so many refugees may increase public debt by almost €69bn (£58bn) by 2020, during the same period refugees will help GDP grow by €126.6bn.

•This article was amended on 15 September 2016. An earlier version gave a figure of 425% where it should have said 325%.