Useful Stats: “Eroding Dominance” Theme of S&E Indicators 2010

Current trends presented in the 2010 edition of the National Science Board’s biennial Science & Engineering Indicators suggest as early as the 2012 edition, the U.S. will no longer leads the world for a key indicator: total R&D expenditures – unless corrective action is taken.

The bump in U.S. spending from the 2009 ARRA/Stimulus may delay the inevitable until 2014, however. Regardless, the overall tone of the report suggests the previous decade of flat spending and little coordinated national innovation policy has had the anticipated negative impacts relative to other countries.

"The data begin to tell a worrisome story," said Kei Koizumi, assistant director for federal R&D in the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy. “U.S. dominance has eroded significantly."

For instance:

• China has reached the U.S. level in terms of its number of researchers. This number has spiked in the past decade making this trend worrisome for those who are concerned about the United States keeping its competitive edge in producing cutting-edge research across the scientific disciplines.

• Large companies continue to shift R&D expenditures to Asia. Overseas research spending by U.S. multinationals in Asia (excluding Japan) has increased from 5% in 1995 to 14% in 2006.
• Over the past decade, R&D intensity--how much of a country's economic activity or gross domestic product is expended on R&D--has grown considerably in Asia, while remaining steady in the U.S. Annual growth of R&D expenditures in the U.S. averaged 5 to 6 percent while in Asia, it has skyrocketed. In some Asian countries, R&D growth rate is two, three, even four, times that of the U.S.

• In terms of R&D expenditures as a share of economic output, while Japan has surpassed the U.S. for quite some time, South Korea is now in the lead--ahead of the U.S. and Japan.
• While the U.S. continues to lead the world in research publications, China has become the second most prolific contributor. China's rapidly developing science base now produces 8 percent of the world's research publications, up from just 2 percent of the world's share in 1995, when it ranked 14th.

The report includes these and other key indicators, such as the patents, globalization of capability; funding, performance and portfolio of U.S. R&D trends; and the composition of the U.S. S&E workforce.

Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/indicators.