Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program Final Report (2003) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Appendix B: Nutritional Screening and Budget Estimates
Appendix B: Nutritional Screening and Budget Estimates
Pages 179-187
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 179... ...
Screening applicants for nutritional risk is the most problematic eligibility criterion for WIC staff to administer for the reasons described in Chapter 7 of the report. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in assessing nutritional risk in the field is assessing who among the income eligible population is not at dietary risk.
|
From page 180... ...
=O=l[r~R] Screening Procedures and the Social Net Benefit of WIC We assume that a dollar of WIC vouchers produces B dollars of benefits (both to the recipient and to society)
|
From page 181... ...
However, the cost to society of the dollar of WIC vouchers is the opportunities that society had to forgo in order to provide the necessary funds for the WIC program. For society to provide a dollar of taxes for the WIC program, it will have to give up a dollar of spending and the associated net benefits that dollar of spending would have provided had it gone to a different use.
|
From page 182... ...
The left-hand side represents the expected benefits of using the results of the screen to identify those not at risk and denying them benefits. Hence the above condition states that if the expected net benefits to society of using the results of the nutritional screen exceed the expected costs, then the results of the screen should be used for eligibility and budget determination.
|
From page 183... ...
In the absence of precise information about any of these dimensions, we first restate the condition for when not to use the nutritional screen for budgetary purposes. Let C denote the total economic cost of $1 of WIC expenditures, 1 + q.
|
From page 184... ...
Since most of the estimates are based on the tax system prior to the 1986 tax reform act, which lowered the marginal tax rates that many taxpayers faced, the panel judges that an estimate of$0.25 for the excess burden of taxation is a reasonable assumption. We can use these estimates to determine a range for the critical values for the benefits of WIC per dollar of WIC spending (B)
|
From page 185... ...
For WIC to generate a net benefit, it must generate at least $1.25 of benefits for the government to rationally fund this program; thus, the WIC benefits to at-risk individuals must be only modestly higher to ignore the nutritional screen in determining eligibility for WIC. For example, if the true probability of being at risk is 90 percent, then the benefits have to be only $1.53 or $0.28 higher than the program costs to ignore the nutritional screen even if the screen is highly reliable at detecting those not at risk (assuming a value of 10.01.
|
From page 186... ...
This appendix explored the conditions in which it is in society's interest of maximizing the net benefits from the administered WIC program to presume that all categorically eligible and income-eligible persons are at nutritional risk and thus to ignore nutritional risk in the budgetary process. The potential gain to society of the presumption of nutritional risk is created because there is no chance that an applicant that is truly eligible would be denied eligibility on the basis of a faulty screening procedure.
|
From page 187... ...
Nutritional screening is used to implement the priority system when funds are limited, and the information obtained is used in tailoring the food package to the individual, planning nutrition education, and making appropriate referrals.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.