WIC provides food, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care and social service referrals to nutritionally at-risk low-income pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children through age 4. This report offers updated estimates of the population that met these criteria and was eligible for WIC benefits in each of the years 1994 through 2007.

This report provides information on the participation patterns of infants and children who were enrolled in WIC from fiscal years 2001 through 2003.

The WIC program provides a combination of direct nutritional supplementation, nutrition education and counseling, and increased access to health care and social service providers for pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women; infants; and children up to the age of five years. WIC seeks to improve fetal development and reduce the incidence of low birthweight, short gestation, and anemia through intervention during the prenatal period. Infants and children who are at nutritional or health risk receive food supplements, nutrition education, and access to health care services to maintain and improve their health and development.

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 FY 1998 at an annual cost of around $4 billion.

This publication is based on the WIC Infant Feeding Practices Study (WIC-IFPS) sponsored by FNS. The WIC-IFPS is a one-year longitudinal study, which describes the infant feeding practices over the first year of life among a nationally representative sample of approximately 900 mothers who participated in WIC while they were pregnant.

FNS asked Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., (MPR) to assess the CPS estimates in relation to alternative estimates from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects longitudinal monthly income data.