WIC General Analysis Project: Profile of WIC Children

摘要

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)provides supplemental foods, nutrition education and access to health care to pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, infants, and children up to age five. Since its inception in the early 1970's, the program has received fairly widespread support and it has grown in size to serve 7.4 million participants in FY98 at an annual cost of around $4 billion. Just over half of the participants (51.4 percent) are children between the ages of 1 and 5. While considerable research has been done on the WIC program, most of it focuses on pregnant women and infants rather than on children. This report uses existing data on children and their families to describe the children who participate in WIC. In order to address a wide range of issues, three main data sources were analyzed: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-III), which provides information on a nationally representative sample of children between 1988 and 1994; the 1993 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which provides information on a nationally representative sample of children between 1993 and 1995; and the second wave of the Comprehensive Child Development Programs (CCDP2), which provides information on a nonrepresentative sample of children between 1994 and 1997.