AEI's new comprehensive analysis of research on WIC--the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, established by Congress in 1972 to improve the diets and health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age five--shows that WIC's overall benefits are modest at best. Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis, coauthors of the Rethinking WIC: An Evaluation of the Women, Infants, and Children Program, challenge the conventional wisdom that WIC is a uniquely successful program and demonstrate that many claims about WIC's effectiveness are simply misleading exaggerations. Rather than abandoning or cutting the program, however, Besharov and Germanis conclude that policymakers should support a sustained effort to make the program more effective.
The need to improve this $5 billion per year program, which serves about 7.3 million women and children, is crucial, say the authors. The extensive benefits of WIC, which have been cited by many analysts and policymakers, have been exaggerated and relate primarily to research conducted on WIC's prenatal program, which involves only 11 percent of program participants. In fact, the incidence of low-birth weight increased by 12 percent from 1986 to 1998. "Overstating WIC's effectiveness undermines support for the research and programmatic flexibility needed to increase the program's beneficial impact," say the authors. Although WIC has had significant effects on the poorest of the poor, the increases in WIC's funding have expanded the program into the lower middle class instead of improving and intensifying services for more needy families.
Congress developed WIC almost thirty years ago, when hunger was the major nutrition-related problem facing disadvantaged Americans. Since then, overweight has replaced hunger as our most serious nutrition-related health problem. Besharov and Germanis suggest that it is time to update WIC’s mission by emphasizing the prevention of overweight and that the program must do much more to improve diet-related health outcomes for low-income Americans.
Part 1 of the volume contains Besharov and Germanis' analysis. Part 2 consists of comments on Besharov and Germanis' study by five leading experts on WIC program research--Michael J. Brien, Nancy R. Burstein, Barbara L. Devaney, Robert Greenstein, and Christopher A. Swann.
Douglas J. Besharov is the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar in Social Welfare Studies at AEI, where he is director of the Social and Individual Responsibility Project, and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Peter Germanis is a research associate at AEI, the assistant director of the University of Maryland's Welfare Reform Academy, and the administrator of the Committee to Review Welfare Reform Research. The five leading experts of WIC program research are Michael J. Brien of the University of Virginia; Nancy R. Burstein of Abt Associates; Barbara Devaney of Mathematica Policy Research; Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Christopher A. Swann of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The AEI Evaluative Series
The growth of public policy research in recent decades has been accompanied by a burgeoning of research and writing on proposed policies and those in the initial stages of implementation. Careful evaluation of the large base of existing programs and policies--many of them politically entrenched and no longer at the forefront of policy debate--has suffered from relative neglect.
The AEI Evaluative Series aims to redress that imbalance. By examining government programs in action, it aims to direct more academic, political, and public attention to whether we are getting our money's worth from well-established programs and whether current "policy reform" agendas are indeed focused on issues with the greatest potential for improved public welfare. The series is directed by Marvin Kosters, AEI resident scholar and director of economic policy studies.
