Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program Final Report (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-12
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The accuracy of these projections is very important. If the projections are too low, eligible people may not be able to receive WIC benefits.
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Some advocates and state WIC agencies believe that these high coverage rates result from USDA estimates of eligible people that are too low and that there are additional eligible people who want to participate but are not being served with current funding levels. However, the high coverage rates have led some members of Congress to conclude that some participants are truly ineligible, and that funding could be reduced somewhat and still meet the needs of truly eligible people who would participate under full funding.
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E S T I M A T I N G E L I G I B I L I T Y A N D P A R T I C I P A T I O N Estimates of WIC Eligibility A major conclusion of the panel is that current estimation methods result in a substantial underestimate of eligibility because monthly income and adjunctive eligibility are not adequately measured. Panel estimates show that a substantially larger number of people would be eligible for WIC if a monthly income measure is used instead of an annual income measure, which is the measure currently used.
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Compared with estimates based on the current USDA methodology, eligibility estimates made using SIPP data and reported participation in Medicaid, TANF, and food stamps, accounting for adjunctive eligibility alone (without accounting for monthly income) results in an additional 18 percent of infants eligible and an additional 10 percent of children eligible for WIC.
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Estimates of WIC Participation Rates Among Eligible Individuals Estimates of eligibility and reported WIC participation from SIPP show that WIC participation rates vary considerably across eligibility categories. The best available estimates of current participation rates show that 73 percent of eligible infants, 38 percent of children, and 67 percent of pregnant and postpartum women participate in WIC (Biller, Currie, and Scholz, 2002~.
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The CPS-Basedt Option The major limitation of the CPS for estimating WIC eligibility is that it measures only annual income and annual participation in WIC and in other public assistance programs that confer adjunctive eligibility for WIC. Use of a monthly measure of income instead of an annual measure, as is currently used, was chosen as the most appropriate time period to measure income to estimate eligibility because WIC regulations give great flexibility in the unit of time for which an applicant must report income and because variation in flows of income for families are better captured with a monthly income measure.
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, continue to use the current adjustment factor of 0.9844 to account for multiple births and infant and fetal deaths. Step 7 To estimate the number of postpartum women in the breastSeeding and nonbreastEeeding eligibility categories, use updated estimates of breastEeeding rates among income-eligible postpartum women with the current USDA method of constructing adjustment factors Step 8 To update the current adjustment factor for eligibility in the U.S.
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Step 3 Appropriately account for certification periods for each group. Step 4 Use updated estimates of breastSeeding rates among income-eligible postpartum women with the current USDA method of constructing adjustment factors to estimate the number of postpartum women in the breastSeeding and nonbreastSeeding eligibility categories.
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For this, SIPP is superior in that it collects monthly income and program participation. However, in order to take advantage of SIPP's longitudinal data, considerable time is required to accumulate enough waves of data to observe eligible people.
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The recommended steps are summarized as follows: Explicitly state the rate of participation in the WIC program that is consistent with the policy goal of fully funding the program. During the process of estimating the number of participants for budgetary planning, compute the number of eligible individuals by participant group (infants, children, and pregnant, breastEeeding postpartum, and nonbreastSeeding postpartum women)
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Nothing in this report should be construed to imply that if the estimated numbers of eligible individuals increases due to improvements in the estimation procedures, that increases in the WIC budget are required. On the contrary, if participation in the program remains constant, increased estimates of the number of eligible people imply only that coverage rates were not as high as previously thought.
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