| Arlington, VA—According to preliminary data from the
National Science Foundation (NSF), Federal obligations are
expected to reach over $105 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2004 for
activities related to research and development (R&D). The new
InfoBrief provides preliminary estimates in advance of the
detailed statistical report Federal Funds for Research and
Development: Fiscal Years 2002, 2003, and 2004, which will be
released this fall. The estimated $105 billion for R&D and R&D
plant (costs related to equipment, facilities, and the like)
represents a 4 percent increase over the FY 2003 level. Research
(both basic and applied) accounts for $54 billion, about half of
the total. Development, which comprises design, development, and
improvement of prototypes and new processes, accounts for $47
billion, or 45 percent of the total. This reverses a decreasing
share of development funding, which fell from 64 percent in FY
1990 to an estimated 43 percent in FY 2003.
These estimates are collected and disseminated as part of
NSF’s legislative mandate to “provide a central clearinghouse
for the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data on
scientific and engineering resources, and to provide a source of
information for policy formulation by other agencies of the
Federal Government. . ..”
Six federal agencies continue to be the major sponsors of R&D
(93 percent of research dollars in FY 2004): the Departments of
Health and Human Services (HHS), Defense (DoD), Energy (DOE),
and Agriculture; the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA); and the National Science Foundation
(NSF). HHS is expected to provide the largest share (52
percent), followed by DoD (11 percent), and DOE and NASA (10
percent each).
The shares of basic and applied research are about equal—25
and 26 percent of the total, respectively. Shares of both grew
between 1990 and 2000 and have remained steady since then.
In both basic and applied research, the life sciences account
for over half the federal funding. Life sciences include
agricultural sciences, biological sciences, environmental
biology, and medical sciences. HHS, mostly from the National
Institutes of Health, is expected to provide 85 percent of this
support.
Federal agencies estimate a 9 percent increase in funding for
development, led by DoD, which will provide $39.9 billion, or 85
percent, of the development total, up 11 percent from FY 2003.
The data for this InfoBrief come from NSF’s annual Survey of
Federal Funds for Research and Development. The InfoBrief is
available on the
webpage of the Division of Science Resources Statistics. |
