Research and development spending France in 5th place among OECD countries

With internal spending on research and development estimated at 2.22% of the GDP in 2016, France remains in 5th place among OECD countries that spend the most of R&D, after South Korea (4.23%), Japan (3.14%), Germany (2.93%) and the United States (2.74%).

France is still ahead of the United Kingdom (1.69%), as well as the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and Spain, all the while remaining slightly below the average of OECD countries (2.34%). The country that allocates the largest part of its GDP to R&D in the European Union is Sweden (3.25%), despite a decrease recorded in 2016. Austria has also surpassed the objective of spending 3% of GDP on R&D (3.09%). As recalled in the ministry’s Note, the 3% mark is the goal set by the Horizon 2020 strategy, aimed at promoting research in Europe.

Another indicator of a country’s research effort is the ratio of researchers in the active population, which the study also takes into account.

In France, 431,100 people are employed full-time in R&D roles in companies and administrations. This number translates to 9.6 researchers per one thousand people in employment in 2016, which places France before Germany (9.3‰), the United Kingdom (9.9‰) and the United States (8.7‰). France ranks after South Korea (13.3‰) and Japan (10.0‰).

It is worth mentioning that, in the European Union, Denmark, Sweden and Austria score even better, with respectively 14.1‰, 13.3‰ and 10.0‰ of researchers per one thousand people in employment. As noted in the Information Note, however, these countries are the least populated in the EU.

Other national indicators are discussed in this study, such as the research effort by French region: Ile-de-France, Auvergne-Rhône Alpes and Occitanie are in the top three. However, Ile-de France, with 19.7 billion euros spent on research, by itself accounts for 40% of the national spending on research.