Updated Analyses Suggest Continued Decline in Research Project Grant Funding Inequalities for NIH-Supported Investigators, but Organizational Inequalities Remain: FY 1998 to FY 2023

We previously showed in this January 2022 blog (based on this paper) that the inequalities in the distribution of Research Project Grant (RPG) funding to principal investigators increased, especially at the top end of funding, during the NIH budget doubling and the first few years after the 2013 budget sequestration. The degree of inequality appeared to fall, however, after NIH implemented the Next Generation Researchers Initiative (NGRI) near the end of  FY2017. Here we present follow-up data that shows that the trends seen in recent years appear to be continuing in fiscal year (FY) 2023. When reading this post, please keep in mind that, in general, NIH awards grants to institutions, not individual scientists. For simplicity here, we refer to PIs receiving awards, but understand this means the scientists designated by their institutions as Principal Investigators. Measuring Inequality Our previous post details how economists describe inequality, which we used for our analyses here. In brief: The “Top-proportion” allows us to track the percent of funds awarded to the top XX percent of investigators. For example, what percent of funds go to the top 1% of investigators. Were funds allocated uniformly, the top 1% of investigators would receive 1% of the funds. In an extremely unequal situation, the top 1% of investigators might receive over 50% of the funds. The “standard deviation of the log of funding (“SD-log”)”, by contrast, reflects more on ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Funding data NGRI RPG scientific workforce diversity Source Type: funding