The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 requires all federal agencies to calculate the amount of erroneous payments in federal programs and to periodically conduct detailed assessments of vulnerable program components. This program assessment of the Family Day Care Home component of USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program provides a national estimate of the share of CACFP family day care homes that are in the wrong reimbursement tier. 

This is the first of a series of annual reports which will assess the administrative error associated with school food authorities’ approval of applications for free and reduced-price school meals. More than 95 percent of students who were approved for benefits on the basis of an application were receiving correct benefits, based on the information in the application files. In school year 2004-05, 3.5 percent of all students who submitted an application for free/reduced-price meal benefits had an administrative error in the processing of their applications,

FNS uses a set of EBT-based administrative tools and undercover investigations to identify and sanction trafficking retailers, and to estimate the extent of trafficking. The estimates of the amount of trafficking, the trafficking rate, and the store violation rate reported here are based on information from almost 33,000 stores subject to administrative or undercover investigation from late 2002 through 2005.

This report – the latest in an annual series – presents estimates of the percentage of eligible persons, by state, who participated in the Food Stamp Program in an average month in fiscal year 2004 and in the two previous years. This report also presents estimates of state participation rates for eligible “working poor” individuals (persons in households with earnings) over the same period. 

This report is the latest in a series on food stamp participation rates based on the March Current Population Survey, and presents national participation rates for fiscal year 2004.

An important measure of the Food Stamp Program’s performance is its ability to reach the people it is meant to serve. This report presents estimates of the food stamp participation rate among eligible working poor persons in each state. Working poor persons are defined as individuals living in house holds in which at least one member had earnings from a job. The participation rates are presented for an average month in fiscal years 2003 and 2002. These estimates can be compared to the state food stamp participation rates previously released for all eligible individuals in Reaching Those in Need: State Food Stamp Participation Rates in 2003 (October 2005).

Recently, the method used to calculate the number of individuals eligible for the WIC program was evaluated and an improved methodology was developed. These new, improved estimates provide better insight on the WIC program and should help improve the program in the future. The new estimates show that 13.5 million individuals were eligible for WIC and 7.7 million participated in WIC in 2003. This coverage rate of 57% is consistent with trends since 2000 and is similar to the coverage rate found in the Food Stamp Program.

In this report we discuss our progress in deriving state participation rates for the working poor. We build upon recent studies examining national participation rates for socioeconomic and demographic subgroups and rates for states among the entire eligible population.

This report presents estimated participation rates for 2002 and revised estimates of rates for 1999, 2000, and 2001.

USDA sponsored the NSLP Application/Verification Pilot Projects to test ways to improve the process for certifying students for free or reduced-price meals. This report presents findings on the impacts of two alternatives to the current application-based certification process - Up-Front Documentation and Graduated Verification - that were tested in 12 public school districts over a three-year period.