NIH grants are unequal, with a majority of them given to white, cis, men

Over the past few years, there has been increasing interest (Peifer, 2017) in how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding support is distributed, with concern voiced by some that there may be excess concentration of support given to men and to the most well-funded late-career investigators. In a report (National Institutes of Health, 2019) issued by an NIH Working Group to the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD), it was noted that "In biomedical science, power stems from who has access to awards. The Working Group heard repeatedly that the concentration of funding in a relatively small number of investigators (who are overwhelmingly white, cisgender, straight men) incentivizes universities to protect researchers bringing in high levels of grant funding".

Recently published literature has raised concerns regarding how NIH distributes funding support. One report (Katz and Matter, 2020) which focused on all ‘R’ grants found increasing inequality of funding support over 30 years (1985–2015). A research letter (Oliveira et al., 2019) found lower levels of support for grants in which women were identified as Principal Investigators. Other reports have documented disproportionate aging of the research workforce (Blau and Weinberg, 2017) and stresses particular to mid-career investigators (Charette et al., 2016); these reports are concerning given evidence that there is no correlation between research stage and scientific impact (Sinatra et al., 2016).

In 2017, the NIH considered imposing a cap (Lauer, 2017a) on individual-investigator research support through use of a ‘Grant Support Index or GSI’ (Lauer, 2017b) which classified grants according to mechanism (e.g. R01, P01, U54) rather than according to dollars. The GSI set a value of 7 for R01 grants, with lower values for ‘smaller’ mechanisms like R03 or R21 and greater values for mechanisms like P01 or U54. The proposed cap was set at 21, meaning that on average no investigator could be designated as PI on more than the equivalent of three R01 grants. The proposed cap was highly controversial (Kaiser, 2017) and was dropped in favor of a different approach (Lauer et al., 2017) that targeted funds directly toward early career investigators.

Here, we present updated data on distribution of NIH support for principal investigators (‘PIs’, keeping in mind that NIH issues awards to institutions [Lauer, 2018], not to individual scientists) with particular attention to career stage, gender, race, and degree. We focus on research project grants (‘RPGs’) as these comprise close to 80% of all NIH extramural research funding; we can also assess patterns that are independent of already well-known disparities for small business and non-RPG research grants.

Results Distribution of funding to RPG PIs over time

Figure 1 shows different measures of funding distribution to RPG PI’s between fiscal years 1985 to 2020. These measures reflect different approaches that economists use to assess income inequality; here we use RPG funding as the analogue of income. We use three different measures:

Proportion of funds going to the top 1%, or centile, as well as to the top 10%, or decile, (Saez and Zucman, 2020) in contrast to the proportion to the bottom 50% (Panel A) or considered alone (Panel C).

Standard deviation of the log of funding (Hoffmann et al., 2020), a measure that accounts for the well-documented skewness in funding and that is particularly sensitive to low and intermediate levels of funding (Panel B).

The Theil T index (Conceição and Ferreira, 2000), a measure that is more sensitive to higher levels of funding (Panel D). Unlike other measures of inequality, the Theil Index is not intuitive. However, it can be used to parse group data, allowing us to parse inequality into within group and between group components; for example, we can see whether there is a greater degree of inequality between men and women as opposed to within cohorts of men and women.

Figure 1 Distribution of Research Project Grant (RPG) Principal Investigator (PI) Funding, Fiscal Years 1985–2020.

Panel A: Percent of RPG funds distributed to the top centile, top decile, and bottom half of investigators. Panel B: Standard deviation of the log of funding, a measure that focuses primarily on … see more

All three measures indicate greater inequalities in funding since the early 1990s through 2006 corresponding to the NIH-doubling and its aftermath; a plateau from 2006 to 2013; a rapid rise after 2013 (the year of sequestration) to 2017; and a decline approaching 2013 levels from 2018 to 2020. The inequalities are more striking among the most highly funded investigators (Panels C and D), where increases are noted with the NIH doubling (1998 to 2003) and in the first few years after the 2013 budget sequestration. The top 1% of investigators received 8% of RPG funds in 1998; in recent years, they received close to 10% of funds. While this may not seem like much, we should keep in mind that a difference of 2% of RPG funds means that a small group of ~300 investigators are receiving in 2020 approximately $420 million (inflation-adjusted) more than they would have received by 1998 standards. Given that the average RPG costs about $500,000, this difference is the equivalent of 800 grants. Inequalities among investigators receiving low to intermediate levels of funding followed a somewhat different trajectory, decreasing during the NIH doubling while increasing after 2013.

Characteristics of the most highly funded RPG principal investigators

Table 1 shows characteristics of 34,936 principal investigators funded in fiscal year 2020 according to whether or not they were among the top funded centile. We defined proxies for career stage according to age, with values of ‘early’ (age < 46), ‘middle’ (age 46 to 58), and ‘late’ (age > 58). Compared to the bottom 99%, the top 1% of investigators were in later career stages and more likely to be white, non-Hispanic, and to hold an MD degree (either alone or with a PhD). The difference in funding levels is striking, with top 1% investigators receiving a median of $4.8 million compared to $0.4 million for all others; they were also much more likely to be supported on multiple RPG grants.