Data & Research
This report supplements FNS administrative data on food package costs by estimating the average monthly food costs for each WIC participant category and food package type. It also estimates total pre- and post-rebate dollars spent on 17 major categories of WIC-eligible foods in FY 2014. This report is an update to the previous WIC Food Package Cost Report for FY 2010.
WIC Participant and Program Characteristics 2016 (PC 2016) summarizes the demographic characteristics of participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nationwide in April 2016. 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 2016 is the most recent in a series of reports generated from WIC state management information system data biennially since 1992.
The WIC Infant and Toddler Feeding Practices Study 2 (WIC ITFPS-2)/ “Feeding My Baby” Study captures data on caregivers and their children over the first 5 years of the child’s life after WIC enrollment to address a series of research questions regarding feeding practices, associations between WIC services and those practices, and the health and nutrition outcomes of children receiving WIC.
This report, the latest in a series of annual reports on WIC eligibility, presents 2015 national and state estimates of the number of people eligible for WIC benefits and the percents of the eligible population and the US population covered by the program, including estimates by participant category.
In 2006, FNS asked the Institute of Medicine to review the WIC food packages. The IOM proposed major changes to improve nutrition and encourage breastfeeding but also expressed the concern that changes related to partial breastfeeding may have unintended consequences. The IOM recommended that FNS conduct an impact study evaluating the birth month breastfeeding changes to the WIC food packages.