Oh, this hurts. I did not want to go into research funding. But now that it is fairly clear that the rate of progress varies significantly by sector, we have to examine the inputs.
The first relevant document found is a PDF from the European Commission. It states that it wants the EU to increase research 'efforts' to 3% of GDP by 2010. Ambitious, that. The document talks about the importance of 'basic research,' as opposed to directed, I assume, which is encouraging. It actually serves as a good basic primer on how funding is structured in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, but while it talks about funding for specific programmes, it doesn't talk about levels of funding at the national or international level. So we move on.
Curious Cat, a blog that bills itself as a Science and Engineering blog, posts research funding for U.S. academic R&D for the past few years (see below in the extended post). More importantly there's a link to the NSF where we find an Excel spreadsheet (also in the extended post below) that charts all federal spending on research for science and engineering between 1970 and 2003. There are other charts available for viewing and downloading here.
In 1970, combined spending by all U.S. Federal agencies for research in science and engineering totaled $4.9 billion (USD). By 2003, that had grown to $53.3 billion (USD). Not bad.
The compound annual growth rate for U.S. Federal funding for research into science and engineering is 7.28%, which means it doubles every 9.86 years.
However, adjusting for inflation to 2006 U.S. dollars, it reads a bit differently. In 2006 dollars, the spend in 1970 was the equivalent of $26 billion, while the 2003 spend rises on recalculation to a total of £58 billion. That provides a CAGR of 2.39%, which would double every 29.35 years. A bit sad, that.
But the spreadsheet breaks spending down by discipline, as well. I'll address that in the next post.
From Curious Cat (the blog mentioned above):
Spending over the last 5 years in billions: $30.7 in 2000; 32.8; 36.4; 40.1 and $42.9 in 2004. For 2004 the funding source for the spending was:
Federal Government: $27.4
State and Local: 2.8
Industry: 2.1
Institutional: 7.8
All other: 2.8
Also for 2004 of the total $32.3 billion was for basic research and $10.6 billion for applied research and development.
Here is the Excel spreadsheet with all Federal spending for basic and applied research between 1970 and 2003. Struck gold, I did.
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