ABSTRACT
Between 1960 and 1980 the percentage of global military expenditures attributed to the Third World has grown from 4.5 to 16. There is some really persuasive support for the belief that high prior economic growth can offset the pejorative effects of militarization. Before doing so or applying our set of controls, it might be useful to identify relationships for the selected militarization indicators which are delineated. Yet much of the military expenditure increase seems to have occurred since the late 1960s, probably reflecting rising costs of increasingly sophisticated imported weapons systems. There is a moderate negative correlation between the physical welfare factor and the militarization indicators. Hence militarization tended to be greater for countries which both at the close of the 1970s and in the early 1960s exhibited lower indices of social welfare.
