Rethinking WIC


Book Description

This book analyzes the research on the effectiveness of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.







The WIC Program


Book Description

The mission of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children through age 4 who are at nutritional risk. WIC provides nutritious foods to supplement diets, nutrition education, and referrals to health care and other social services. Almost half of all infants and about a quarter of all children ages 1-4 in the U.S. participate in the program. WIC accounts for 10% of total Federal spending on food and nutrition assistance. This report describes the WIC program ¿ how it works, its history, program trends, and the characteristics of the population it serves. It also examines current issues facing WIC, focusing mainly on those with important economic implications.




WIC Participation Patterns: An Investigation of Delayed Entry and Early Exit


Book Description

USDA's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides nutritious foods, nutrition counseling, and referrals to health and other social services to low-income women and their infants/children up to age 5. Despite the health benefits of WIC participation, many eligible women do not participate during pregnancy, and many households exit WIC when a participating child turns 1 year old. The authors of this report use the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to understand these transitions into and out of WIC. Findings show that households that are more economically advantaged are more likely to delay entry into the program or exit after a child turns 1 year old. Some of the mothers exiting the program reported that WIC requires too much effort and that its benefits are not worth the time (26.2 percent of those exiting) or that they have scheduling and transportation problems (almost 10 percent of those exiting), suggesting that the costs of participation may be a barrier to continued WIC participation.




Review of WIC Food Packages


Book Description

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) began 40 years ago as a pilot program and has since grown to serve over 8 million pregnant women, and mothers of and their infants and young children. Today the program serves more than a quarter of the pregnant women and half of the infants in the United States, at an annual cost of about $6.2 billion. Through its contribution to the nutritional needs of pregnant, breastfeeding, and post-partum women; infants; and children under 5 years of age; this federally supported nutrition assistance program is integral to meeting national nutrition policy goals for a significant portion of the U.S. population. To assure the continued success of the WIC, Congress mandated that the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reevaluate the program's food packages every 10 years. In 2014, the USDA asked the Institute of Medicine to undertake this reevaluation to ensure continued alignment with the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This, the second report of this series, provides a summary of the work of phase I of the study, and serves as the analytical underpinning for phase II in which the committee will report its final conclusions and recommendations.




Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program


Book Description

This report reviews the methods used to estimate the national number of people eligible to participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) under full funding of the program. It reviews alternative data sets and methods for estimating income eligibility, adjunctive eligibility (which occurs when people are eligible for WIC because they are enrolled in other federal public assistance programs) and nutritional risk, as well as for estimating participation if the program is fully funded.




A Safety Net That Works


Book Description

This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.




The Invisible Safety Net


Book Description

The book concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net. For example, Currie recommends the implementation of a benefit debit card that would provide benefits with less administrative burden on the recipient. A complement to books such as Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling Nickel and Dimed, which document the personal struggles of the working poor. The Invisible Safety Net provides a big picture book at the kind of programs and solutions that would help ease those struggles. Comprehensive and authoritative, it will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.







Social Experimentation, Program Evaluation, and Public Policy


Book Description

This volume provides a single collection some of the best articles on social experimentation and program evaluation that have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM). Provides exposure to a variety of well-executed social experiments and evaluations for evidence-based public policy Examines the theory and conduct of evaluations and social experiments as they relate to their practical implementation in evidence-based policy making Provides exposure to the fundamental issues surrounding the conduct of evaluations as well as to the relative merits of social experiments and the ethics and use of evaluations