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.

Trafficking of SNAP benefits occurs when SNAP recipients sell their benefits for cash to food retailers, often at a discount. Although trafficking does not increase costs to the federal government, it is a diversion of program benefits from their intended purpose of helping low-income families access a nutritious diet. This report, the latest in a series of periodic analyses, provides estimates of the extent of trafficking during the period 2009 through 2011.

The Healthy Incentive Pilot (HIP) is being evaluated using a rigorous research design. The overall goal of the evaluation is to assess the impact of HIP on participants’ intake of fruits and vegetables. 

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

The in-depth interviews discussed in this report consist of detailed discussions with 90 SNAP households with children in 6 states (California, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Texas) about their financial situations, their use of SNAP, and their overall food security.

In response to rising caseloads and limited resources, states have sought to reduce administrative costs while maintaining or increasing access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The changes states have made are commonly referred to as modernization, not privatization. Modernization decisions are influenced by a variety of factors that vary by state. This report presents in-depth case studies in five states with modernization initiatives in place between July 2000 and February 2012 to describe their experiences, assess potential impacts, and identify key lessons learned.

The Early Implementation Report addresses the processes involved in implementing and operating HIP, focusing on the early implementation period, from pilot inception to March 2012.

The purpose of this study was to examine how to define “adequacy” of SNAP allotments objectively in the context of program goals to improve food security and access to a healthy diet, existing data sources that could inform an assessment of the adequacy of existing and potential alternative SNAP allotments, and new data requirements to strengthen the evidence-base and allow for further rigorous analyses. 

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.