MONEY · RESILIENCE · FUTURE CAPACITY
Can we afford the future?
Governments borrow to fund services and investment. Interest is the price of that borrowing. Explore how debt, rates and growth interact.
Market quotes retrieved 2026-11-02; individual quote dates are shown below. These are not live or necessarily closing prices. This snapshot shows 3 rising, 9 falling and 0 unchanged monthly yields. One monthly change does not establish a “parabolic” trend.
Try the future budget model
Illustrative scenario, not a forecast. Choose an economy, then change the assumptions. Defaults of 3% average cost, 4% growth, 1% primary deficit and 20% pass-through are examples, not measured country inputs.
United States: ten illustrative years
Starting debt 123.9% GDP · benchmark yield 4.92% (quote 2026-11-02) → scenario borrowing rate 5.92%. All other inputs below are your assumptions.
━ Blue: unchanged market rate┄ Orange: changed-rate scenario
Reference debt ends at 136.9% GDP; the scenario differs by +8.37 percentage points. A positive interest difference means more of annual economic output goes to debt service under these assumptions.
Annual model results
| Year | Reference debt / GDP | Scenario debt / GDP | Scenario interest / GDP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 124.17% | 124.40% | 4.27% |
| 2 | 124.80% | 125.47% | 4.85% |
| 3 | 125.72% | 126.98% | 5.34% |
| 4 | 126.88% | 128.86% | 5.77% |
| 5 | 128.24% | 131.06% | 6.15% |
| 6 | 129.75% | 133.51% | 6.50% |
| 7 | 131.40% | 136.19% | 6.81% |
| 8 | 133.15% | 139.06% | 7.11% |
| 9 | 135.00% | 142.11% | 7.39% |
| 10 | 136.93% | 145.30% | 7.66% |
Compare all 12 economies & source dates
G7 plus Australia, Brazil, China, India and South Korea. Local-currency 10-year benchmark yields; monthly changes rounded to basis points (100 basis points = 1 percentage point). Different currencies and inflation mean these are not equivalent investment returns.
| Economy | 10-year yield | Quote date | Month change | Debt / GDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 5.12% | 2026-11-02 | -21 bp | 51.0% |
| Brazil | 15.41% | 2026-10-30 | +125 bp | 93.3% |
| Canada | 3.78% | 2026-11-02 | -17 bp | 113.5% |
| China | 1.64% | 2026-11-02 | -6 bp | 99.2% |
| France | 4.97% | 2026-11-02 | +10 bp | 116.0% |
| Germany | 3.32% | 2026-11-02 | -17 bp | 62.9% |
| India | 7.33% | 2026-11-02 | +12 bp | 84.1% |
| Italy | 4.46% | 2026-11-02 | -17 bp | 137.1% |
| Japan | 2.77% | 2026-11-02 | -33 bp | 206.5% |
| South Korea | 4.02% | 2026-11-02 | -36 bp | 52.3% |
| United Kingdom | 5.24% | 2026-11-02 | -16 bp | 102.3% |
| United States | 4.92% | 2026-11-02 | -39 bp | 123.9% |
Trading Economics: indicative market quotes ↗ · IMF Fiscal Monitor: tables A7 and A15 ↗
Gross debt does not subtract financial assets. IMF definitions can differ from national figures, notably Brazil. India uses fiscal years. Japan’s consolidated face-value definition changed in this vintage, limiting comparisons with older IMF releases. China’s reported perimeter is narrower than augmented-debt measures. IMF estimates use information available through 1 April 2026.
Reviewed 2026-11-02. Market figures remain dated snapshots until the editorial refresh verifies replacements; this is not an automatic market feed. Source organisations retain rights to their material and do not endorse Civometer.
The economic conditions behind progress
Three-year comparison reported in the 2026 edition; rounded, not a country borrowing rate.
2025 estimate; not a measured permanent productivity gain.
2025; historical growth, not the outlook for 2026.
These report findings provide context for the country scenarios. They are not current bond quotes or a forecast that all economies follow the same path.
Read the findings and what they mean for this model
Debt service and refinancing
IMF finding: The IMF reports that global interest payments rose from about 2% to nearly 3% of GDP in three years. It describes higher, more volatile long-term sovereign yields and warns that greater reliance on short-term borrowing increases exposure to sudden funding changes.
Civometer interpretation: In Civometer, compare the rate change and annual pass-through inputs. More frequent refinancing can transmit a market-rate shock faster. The report does not provide country-specific pass-through estimates for our model.
Read the report chapter ↗AI investment, productivity and risk
IMF finding: The report estimates that AI-related technology investment contributed 0.5 percentage point to US growth in 2025. It also highlights uneven labor-market effects and the risk that debt-financed AI investment delivers less than expected.
Civometer interpretation: Growth assumptions should allow both gains and disappointments. A historical contribution to US growth is not a permanent annual uplift for every economy, and it is not automatically added to the model.
Read the report chapter ↗Trade and energy resilience
IMF finding: Global trade volumes grew nearly 5% in 2025, according to the report. It describes energy-supply disruptions, trade barriers and uncertainty as constraints on growth and investment, despite that earlier resilience.
Civometer interpretation: Energy and trade shocks can change growth, revenue and spending pressures. The current simulator lets you vary nominal growth and the primary deficit; it does not estimate those shocks or separate inflation from real growth.
Read the report chapter ↗Digital finance and sovereign bonds
IMF finding: The IMF describes potential gains in payment access and transaction efficiency from digital finance. It also warns that large stablecoin redemptions could strain the government-bond markets backing those assets.
Civometer interpretation: Payment innovation and financial resilience need separate assessments. Stablecoin adoption is not evidence that sovereign funding risk has disappeared; this liquidity channel is contextual and is not simulated here.
Read the report chapter ↗Source: IMF Annual Report 2026: Navigating a Precarious World. Observation periods vary by finding. The country debt ratios retain their April 2026 Fiscal Monitor vintage and the yields retain their separate snapshot date. No values above are used to silently recalibrate the scenario or progress score.
What this can mean for future progress
Less budget room
If revenue and other policies do not adjust, higher debt service can leave less room for education, health, research and clean infrastructure. The model measures the interest difference, not a promised spending cut.
Investment and growth
Higher financing costs can make projects harder to fund. Productive public investment can also support future growth. Try different growth and primary-balance assumptions instead of treating all debt as harmful.
Resilience matters
Maturity, currency, inflation, tax capacity and investor demand matter alongside debt size. These ratios alone do not estimate default risk or predict crisis dates.
This fiscal scenario layer adds context to Money & Capital and Peace & Cooperation. It does not mechanically alter the existing progress score: no validated conversion from fiscal pressure into milestone delays is available here.
Model equations, assumptions & limitations
Each year, average interest cost moves part-way toward the selected 10-year yield plus the scenario change. The unchanged-rate reference uses the same starting assumptions. OECD Global Debt Report 2026 explains why refinancing spreads the impact of market rates over time.
Effective cost = previous cost × (1 − pass-through) + new borrowing rate × pass-through.
Debt / GDP = previous debt / GDP × (1 + effective cost) / (1 + nominal growth) + primary deficit.
Interest / GDP = previous debt / GDP × effective cost / (1 + nominal growth).
Rates in these equations are fractions. Debt and primary deficit are percentages of GDP. A primary deficit excludes interest; a negative input is a primary surplus. Nominal growth includes inflation. Gross debt is floored at zero; surplus assets are not tracked.
This stylised pass-through approximation is not a maturity-by-maturity debt model. The 10-year quote is a proxy, not the government's actual average funding cost. The scenario holds growth and primary balance constant and excludes currency changes, valuation adjustments, contingent liabilities, policy reactions and feedback from rates to growth. Different source dates are combined deliberately; Year 1–10 are illustrative steps, not dated forecasts. Educational information, not investment advice.