Defence Expenditures and Human Capital Development in the Middle East and South Asia Available to Purchase

The question of whether military expenditures in the Third World in general and the Middle East/South Asia region in particular have been at the expense of national human resource development is addressed. The findings of a cross‐sectional analysis of public sector expenditure patterns in a large number of developing countries suggest that a simple“guns versus education” trade‐off model is too simplistic. Increased defence expenditures do sharply cut human resource development in countries with particularly high military burdens, especially in the Middle East/South Asia region. However, this negative trade‐off does not appear to be an accurate description of the process by which resources are allocated in the Third World in general.