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Indicator IV-1
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National Endowment for the Humanities Funding Levels
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NOTE TO READERS: Please include the following reference when citing data from this page:
"American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Indicators, http://HumanitiesIndicators.org".
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At the request of the Humanities Indicator project, the National Humanities Alliance
(NHA) compiled data from publicly available reports and documentation supplied by the
NEH’s Office of Strategic Planning. These data, which have been adjusted for inflation
(all funding figures are given in 2006 dollars; for the nominal figures, see
Supporting Table IV-1a),
permit an examination of trends in NEH funding levels over the last several
decades, and, as such, reveal that the period between the late 1960s and 1979 was one of
substantial, virtually uninterrupted growth in NEH funding, with appropriations for the
agency increasing from approximately $27 million to over $400 million (Figure IV-1a).
Funding, however, quickly dropped from this historic high, and after three years of
marked reductions appropriations were down 32%. Thereafter, funding declined
incrementally until 1996, when another major contraction occurred. At that time, total
appropriations to the agency were cut 38%, from $228 million to $141 million.
Subsequently, funding remained near this lower level through FY 2007.
As the figure also indicates, the president’s budget request has tended to exceed the
eventual appropriation received by the agency. The 1980s, however, were a notable
exception to this general rule, particularly in the early years of the decade when the
Reagan administration’s request was well below the amount of funding Congress
ultimately directed to the NEH.
The NEH is a grant-making agency that distributes the bulk of its appropriations to states,
organizations, and individuals through various programs, and reserves a small, but, as the
data reveal, growing proportion of funding for administration. Although the absolute
amounts of agency funding directed toward administrative purposes have been quite
stable since the late 1970s, shrinking program budgets meant that between 1979 (the peak
year of NEH funding) and 2007, the administrative share of the NEH budget more than
doubled, increasing from 7% to 17% of the total agency appropriation (Figure IV-1b).
The NEH distributes program dollars in two forms: 1) as grants to state humanities
councils according to a legislatively mandated formula (for more on council revenues and
the details of the formula by which monies are distributed among the councils, see
Indicator IV-3, State Humanities Council Revenues.; and 2) as discretionary awards made
to individuals and organizations, including state humanities councils, mainly through
national grant competitions (see Indicator IV-2, Distribution of NEH
Program Funding among Activity Types,
which inventories the major types of grant programs and the
amount of funding allocated to each one). Figure IV-1c reveals that the amount of
money distributed by formula to the councils has remained relatively constant since 1987.
Meanwhile, the substantial 1996 reduction in the agency’s budget described above had its
impact on discretionary funds, which dropped from approximately $163 million in FY
1995 to just under $85.6 million in FY 1996. Funding remained near this lower level
through FY 2007.
Figure IV-1d lists the amounts of funding directed by the NEH to the 50 states, the
District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico through the agency’s formula and discretionary
programs in FY 2006. While the nature of the funding formula keeps the amounts of
nondiscretionary funding received by each state within fairly narrow bounds, the range in
the amounts of discretionary funding flowing to individual states (in the form of grants to
its residents and institutions) is considerable. For example, whereas New York’s formula-
based grant was 2.3 times that of New Mexico for FY 2006, the amount of discretionary
grant monies flowing to New York was approximately 10 times the amount awarded to
New Mexico. Because such discretionary monies are awarded, for the most part, on a
competitive basis, the distribution of these funds among states (i.e., both the amounts
awarded to states and the variation among states in the total amounts garnered by its
residents and institutions) varies from year to year.
The final column of Figure IV-1d adjusts for population size, indicating the per capita
obligation for each state. These per capita obligations ranged from a low of 14 cents for
the states of Alabama, Florida, and Texas to a high of $7.26 for the District of Columbia.
The district’s obligation was uncommonly large, however. Apart from this exceptional
case, the states receiving the largest allocations were Vermont ($1.77), Alaska, Delaware,
Massachusetts, and Wyoming (approximately $1.30). The national per capita obligation
for FY 2006 was 39 cents.
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