Useful Stats: State R&D Expenditures, Intensity per State: FY 2006 & 2007

In FY2007, the states in aggregate expended $1.23 billion in funds for research and development, according to recent data released by the National Science Foundation. This is the second year consecutive annual data from the NSF's State Agency Research and Development Expenditures series has been produced. SSTI has prepared a table that shows for both FY07 and FY06 each state's expenditures for R&D from the state government, the state's GDP, and the spending intensity as measured by R&D expenditures per million dollars of GDP.

While New York led the country with $128.4 million in state R&D expenditures in FY07, it spent $116.41 on R&D funding for every million dollars of its GDP. The only other two states to have more than $100 million in R&D state spending in FY07 were Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Wyoming led the U.S. in state R&D funding intensity, expending $618.77 in R&D for every million dollars of its GDP. The next four states leading in R&D per GDP were Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, followed by North Dakota. These top five states are all EPSCoR states.

It should be noted that there are many challenges to measuring state R&D expenditures, several of which NSF explains in the data notes for the report. For instance, eight states reported increases of more than 100 percent from FY06 to FY07. However, in FY07, four of these states – Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island – reported large R&D expenditures for agencies that were not involved in the FY06 survey. In all, 251 agencies nationwide reported conducting or funding state R&D in FY07.

In an attempt to avoid overlap and inconsistencies in reporting, NSF excludes in this report state funds to colleges and universities, which are surveyed in another annual NSF instrument, Survey of R&D Expenditures at Colleges and Universities. Also excluded were state R&D expenditures that did not flow through state agency budgets, which, for some states can be substantial.

The SSTI table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/120909t.htm.

Additional information on the NSF's State Agency Research and Development Expenditures series is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/staterd/.