Source: Rebecca McKibbin and Bruce A. Weinberg, “Does Research Save Lives? The Local Spillovers of Biomedical Research on Mortality,” NBER Working Paper Series, October 2021.
Commentary: Research and development (R&D) in life sciences brings tangible innovations such as medical devices plus new knowledge that can be easily shared among many healthcare providers. But while medical benefits from technological innovations in life sciences are easily observable, since they are tangible products, the benefits of biomedical knowledge-creation are less understood. By utilizing new data on medical research output and administrative death records, a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) produces estimates on the causal link between biomedical research and health outcomes.
The study examines local data in the United States to capture spillover effects in the closest proximity to where research occurred, and the researchers’ econometric estimates showed that a 1 percent increase in local funding for disease research reduced mortality from that disease by an average of 0.22 percent. Further, local funding producing new research publications shows especially promising results for public health: A 1 percent increase in disease-specific publications in a community-led to a cumulative 0.35 percent reduction in the local mortality rate observed over five years for that disease. Controlling for disease and locality, an additional biomedical publication reduced potential life-expectancy losses by 388 years. Policymakers should be aware of these robust benefits and take greater efforts toward supporting additional biomedical research at both the federal and local levels.
