Rochester has the most NIH funding per capita. Budget cuts could spell job losses, analysis finds

ROCHESTER — For every person in the Rochester area labor market, Mayo Clinic and other researchers receive $1,237 from the National Institutes of Health.

That's the greatest amount of NIH funding per capita in the nation, according to a recent analysis of NIH funding and local employment by the nonpartisan Brookings Institute.

"The (cities) that receive large amounts of NIH funding are generally not massive communities," said Phillip Levine, a nonresident senior fellow at the institute, an economics professor at Wellesley College and a coauthor of the analysis.

Many of the other cities with the greatest funding per capita are home to universities, Levine said, including Iowa City, Iowa ($996), Raleigh, North Carolina ($1,183), and Madison, Wisconsin ($681).

"Now, the Mayo Clinic is n