Authors: Bart Hobijn and Erick Sager

While homeland security is widely seen as an important national objective, the costs of this effort are not well understood. An analysis of public and private expenditures on homeland security shows that overall spending rose by $44 billion between 2001 and 2005—a clear increase but one that represents a gain of only ¼ of 1 percent as a share of U.S. GDP. Private sector expenditures increased very modestly in dollar terms and remained unchanged as a fraction of the sector’s GDP.