State R&D Expenditures By the Numbers

Last week, we highlighted the R&D funding shortfalls in the FY2008 budget and compared the President’s request to pay for the Iraq war with what that $135.4 billion could buy in domestic science and technology. As Congress considers the supplemental funding request and the spending earmarks that will accompany it, it’s worth looking at what states themselves spend on R&D.

According to a recent National Science Foundation survey, state agencies poured nearly $1.1 billion (current dollars) into research and development in 2006, the most recent year for which the agency has numbers. What might come as a surprise is that 49 percent of this spending comes from just six states: Pennsylvania, California, New York, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida. The Federal government allocated $142,409,000,000 in total R&D funding in 2006 and $142,456,000,000 in 2008 (in constant dollars). To see the distribution of state-agency R&D dollars, we’ve mapped the data across the country:

As Maine’s $50 million technology initiative has shown, investing state funds in R&D can play a crucial role in creating jobs and bolstering regional economies. For further analysis of the NSF survey check out the Chronicle and SSTI.

Tags: funding, Innovation

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