Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program Final Report (2003) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2. Overview of WIC and the Current Estimation Methodology
2. Overview of WIC and the Current Estimation Methodology
Pages 18-33
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 18... ...
The number of women, infants, and young children served per month increased from 0.2 million in FY 1974, to 3.6 million in FY 1988, to 7.2 million in FY 2000. WIC provides three types of benefits: supplemental food, usually in the form of vouchers or checks that can be exchanged for specific foods from participating retail grocers; nutrition education; and referrals to health care and to other social services.
|
From page 19... ...
In the mid- to late 1990s, many observers came to the conclusion that the full-funding level of participants had been reached. This was because states had some unspent funds for FY 1996 and because coverage rates for the program (the number of participants divided by the number of people estimated to be eligible for the program)
|
From page 20... ...
In the event that more eligible people apply for WIC than were originally budgeted for, states may implement a priority waiting system, or it is possible for states to receive supplementary funding to serve all those who are eligible, but in the recent past, waiting lists and supplementary funds have very rarely been needed. It is not correct, however, to conclude that, since waiting lists and supplementary funds have not been needed, WIC has been fully funded.
|
From page 21... ...
States receive funds that can be used for program outreach, but they have an incentive to increase program participation only to the level that their allocated funds allow them to serve additional participants. It is inherently more difficult to estimate the number of likely participants because participation in WIC is a behavioral choice.2 Some individuals may decide that the benefits of WIC are too low to offset the time spent applying for the program, or that the stigma of participation is too high, or some eligible people may not be aware of the program.
|
From page 22... ...
Estimating the Effects of Changes in Program Policies Estimates of eligibility and of participation among eligible people are also important to understanding how changes in the rules or administrative policies of WIC or of other programs affect eligibility and participation. WIC program rules and administrative policies change.
|
From page 23... ...
Lower participation by some subgroups points to areas in which outreach may need to be more effective. WIC ELIGIBILITY Types of Eligibility and Certification Practices To receive WIC benefits, an applicant must be categorically eligible, income eligible, and nutritionally at risk.
|
From page 24... ...
Those who are enrolled in the federal Medicaid, Food Stamp, or TANF programs are adjunctively eligible for WIC even if their income exceeds 185 percent of poverty. States also may use enrollment in other means-tested programs, such as the National School Lunch Program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
|
From page 25... ...
Such variation among agencies creates uncertainty in selecting the most appropriate methods to estimate the number of people eligible for WIC on a national level. In this section, we discuss areas in which some flexibility is allowed namely, the accounting period for measuring income and nutritional risk criteria.
|
From page 26... ...
However, they still are allowed to use cutoff values that are more stringent than those in the standardized list of criteria, and they may omit the use of some of the standard1ze( ~ criteria. Since two widely used types of dietary risk criteria, failure to meet dlietary guidlelines and inadlequate diet, still are unstandardized across states, local WIC offices use different methods for determining if a person is at dietary risk.
|
From page 27... ...
OVERVIEW OF WIC AND THE CURRENTESTIMATIONMETHODOLOGY 27 Estimates of the Number of Fully Eligible Persons Estimates of the numbers of persons eligible for WIC are produced separately for each category of eligibility. The estimate of the number of infants who are eligible is especially important to obtaining an estimate of the total number eligible for WIC because it is used to derive the numbers of eligible pregnant and postpartum women.
|
From page 28... ...
to estimate the number of infants and children living in families with annual incomes below 185 percent offederal poverty guide
|
From page 29... ...
In assessing family income in the eligibility determination process, states can adopt either the income guidelines for the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program or the income guidelines for free or reduced price health care programs. Box 2-7 lists income sources counted under both guidelines.
|
From page 30... ...
. For the purposes of estimating income eligibility, current USDA methods use annual census money income to define income, which includes all the sources listed in Box 2-7.
|
From page 31... ...
and were derived using life table methods that controlled for the age and income of mothers. To estimate adjunctive eligibility for each of the categories, the USDA method makes a modest adjustment for infants and children who may be eligible for WIC because they are adjunctively eligible through participation in the Medicaid, Food Stamp, or TANF programs.6 The method adds 14,000 infants and 76,000 children to the core estimates of the number of income-eligible infants and children.
|
From page 32... ...
Past practice in making this adjustment has assumed that participation rates for WIC will mirror participation rates for the Food Stamp Program for children ages 0 through 4 years. Until recently, the food stamp participation rates from the late 1980s were used to adjust the eligibility estimates, meaning that roughly 80 percent of eligible people were estimated to participate.
|
From page 33... ...
Current methods for making these estimates use the March CPS to estimate the number of income-eligible infants and children. The estimates of infants, along with several adjustment factors, are used to estimate the number of income-eligible pregnant and postpartum women.
|
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.