More researchers, the same money? R&D spending per researcher in Kazakhstan, 2010-2024

Abstract

Between 2010 and 2024 the number of researchers per million people in Kazakhstan more than doubled, from 360 to 758, while spending on research and development (R&D) was about the same share of GDP in both years (0.15% and 0.16%). This study used World Bank and UNESCO data to check whether each researcher therefore received less money, as I expected, and compared Kazakhstan with the other former Soviet republics. In constant 2021 purchasing-power-parity (PPP) dollars, R&D spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) researcher fell from 112.4 thousand in 2010 to 77.1 thousand in 2024 (-31.4%): the number of FTE researchers grew 2.57 times and spending 1.77 times. Almost all of the fall happened in 2012 and 2013, when the FTE count rose by 61.2% and 22.4%, and UNESCO marks both years as breaks in the series. National statistics show that the number of researchers counted as persons grew by only 17.5% in 2012, all of it in the higher education sector, and spending per person fell by 3.9%, compared with 30.0% per FTE researcher. On the comparable data for 2013-2024, spending per FTE researcher fell to 58.1 thousand in 2018 and then rose to 7.4% above its 2013 level. In 2024 Kazakhstan spent less per researcher than Russia (151.3 thousand) and Belarus (109.1 thousand) but more than the five other former Soviet republics with data for that year. Most of the long-run fall therefore coincides with the breaks in the series and, in 2012, with a rise in the share of the year each researcher was counted as spending on research, not with a matching rise in the number of people; the data cannot separate a change in counting from a real increase in research time. Kazakhstan's R&D spending relative to GDP was the second lowest of the eight countries.

Keywords: research and development, R&D expenditure, researchers, full-time equivalent, science funding, statistics, Kazakhstan, Central Asia

Әдебиеттер тізімі

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Дәйексөз келтіру үлгісі

Secondary School No. 125, Almaty, Kazakhstan More researchers, the same money? R&D spending per researcher in Kazakhstan, 2010-2024 // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 2. – Pp. 106–113.