WIC Participant and Program Characteristics 2014 (PC 2014) summarizes the demographic characteristics of participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nationwide in April 2014. It includes information on participant income and nutrition risk characteristics, estimates breastfeeding initiation rates for WIC infants, and describes WIC members of migrant farm-worker families. PC 2014 is the most recent in a series of reports generated from WIC State management information system data biennially since 1992.

The main objectives of this report are to describe how Loving Support© Peer Counseling is currently implemented in WIC state agencies and local agencies; and to draw comparisons with the program’s implementation in 2008, when the last study was conducted. 

This is the tenth in a series of annual reports to examine administrative errors incurred during the local educational agency’s (LEA) approval process of household applications for free and reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). This report examines administrative error estimates in student certification for free and reduced-price NSLP meals.

FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error.  FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.

This report uses statistical modeling techniques to assess the relationship between direct certification performance and specific State practices, seeking best practices and providing recommendations for States to use when developing their Continuous Improvement Plans.

This study examined program outcomes such as procedural denials and application timeliness when applicant interviews were conducted by community-based organizations (CBOs) staff to outcomes when SNAP staff conducted applicant interviews in 4 states - Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Texas.

This report is a census of women, infants, and children who were participating in the WIC program in April, 2012. The report includes information on participant income and nutrition risk characteristics, and estimates breastfeeding initiation rates for WIC infants.

This report estimates the average monthly food costs for each of 5 WIC participant subgroups and estimates total dollars spent on 17 major categories of WIC-eligible foods in FY 2010. The participant and food level costs in this report are USDA’s first estimates since implementation of the 2009 WIC food package changes.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program that for three decades has helped supplement the diets of low-income Americans, including seniors, by providing them with emergency food and nutrition assistance at no cost. This white paper explains the program and describes some of its key results.

This study describes how farmers markets and direct marketing farmers operate and their perceived benefits and barriers to accepting SNAP.