Data Bank: NIH Funding By the Numbers

As we wrote last week, the current stimulus legislation moving through the House can help boost the economy by providing funds that support scientific research.

In particular, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would allocate $2 billion for biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. The NIH will determine how to distribute the funds based on the merit-based grant applications they receive, and there are no shortage of projects ready for the infusion: currently 80 percent of grant requests currently go unfunded by the Institutes.

Annual increases that doubled the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003 grew the federal support for biomedical R&D across the country. But since FY2004, funding for the NIH has been flat; inflation has driven purchasing power down 13 percent in real dollars.

(Source: AAAS Budget and Policy Program)

For a full historical view of how the flat funding impacts grants to states, check out this motion chart, in which the period of contraction is readily visible. (Data from NIH.)

The proposed stimulus package is a way to simultaneously fund those biomedical projects-in-waiting, support the younger generation of researchers who must wait years to win independent funding, and create good jobs in every state. Here’s more by the numbers:

5.8: the number of additional jobs generated by each bioscience job in the national economy

1.3 million: total national employment in biosciences in 2006

350,000: total jobs supported by NIH grants in 2007

$50,537,000,000: total state economic output generated by $22,846,000,000 in NIH funding (a 2.2:1 ratio)

32: percentage of NIH research project grant proposals funded in 1999

24: percentage of NIH research project grant proposals funded in 2007

39: average age at which a researcher won his or her first independent grant in 1990

43: average age at which a researcher won his or her first independent grant in 2007

More on the benefits of increased NIH funding: “Where’s the Biomed Bailout?” and “Recovering Innovation, Innovating to Recover“

Posted by Andrew Plemmons Pratt | January 23, 2009 | Share This |

Tags: funding, NIH

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2 Responses to “Data Bank: NIH Funding By the Numbers”

Marilyn Walker says:
These are absolutely fantastic numbers – things I would have never thought about. At Research!America we compare similar numbers to Americans’ leisure spending. Not QUITE the same result as your strong arguments here, but effective advocacy tools, we think. You can see them (some of which compare spending to CDC, AHRQ or other federal agency spending) at http://www.researchamerica.org/research_takes_cents.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Allan Shore says:
As I read this I’m waiting for a report that a transformative, innovative grant request that would change the scientific paradigm to better address Latino addiction issues (using new communication technologies) is attempting to get transmitted to NIH in response to one of the initiatives that clearly needs to do more. These numbers are great and consistent with that case we’ve made to NIH too. We actually have two proposals pending that fit the concerns expressed on this site. Let’s hope someone is listening. I fully expect to use these numbers in other grants that I write soon to seek other funding opportunities because it remains the case that ethnic minority programs are a distinct disadvantage.

Thanks for trying to help us all.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:03 pm