Republicans fund science more than Democrats

Scientist studying using a microscope. Image by Yakuzakorat – Own work, CC BY 4.0

These days, U.S. Republicans appear more sceptical about science with falsehoods like climate change denial and a disbelief in vaccines dominating the corridors of the White House.

Yet Republican presidents and House majorities between 1980-2020 spent more on science compared with Democrats, according to an analysis of grants, contracts and internal funding conducted by Northwestern University.

This is based on an assessment of public records maintained by the U.S. Government Publishing Office and Congressional Budget Office over a 40-year period.

The research team, led by the Kellogg School of Management’s Dashun Wang and Alexander Furnas, looked at the full scope of federal money contained in appropriations bills – the bills which fund the regular recurring expenses of the government – for science from 1980 to 2020. This included grant making and the scientific work federal agencies conducted in-house and through government contracts. 

This matters, not least given the size of government spending on science and technology. After World War II, the U.S. federal government began to invest heavily in scientific research, with an emphasis on national security and economic growth. Since then, the U.S. government has become the largest research funder in the world. Grant making, which is highly institutionalized within executive agency bureaucracies is an important part of the funding landscape.

The researchers manually identified 171 specific federal appropriations accounts across 27 federal agencies associated with science or research activity, defining science and research broadly by focusing not only on research and development (R&D) funding but also on social science and policy research — such as NASA, the Institute for Education Sciences in the United States Department of Education, the Census Bureau and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Department of Commerce, and Research, Development, Test and Evaluation programs in the Department of Defense.

In addition to analysing the numbers, researchers looked at which party controlled the presidency, and both houses of the U.S. Congress at the time — primarily focusing on the presidency and House of Representatives.

As an overall finding, the science- or research-related appropriations accounts received, on average, $150 million more in years when Republicans controlled appropriations in the House, and $100 million more when there was a Republican president.

The motivation by the researchers is to understand science funding dynamics and to provide a foundation for science advocacy and policy design. The researchers also hope their results foster more bipartisanship when it comes to political conversations around science and scientific funding.

The research appears in the journal Science, titled: “Partisan disparities in the funding of science in the United States”.

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