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“
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