WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, is a widely studied public food assistance program that aims to provide foods, nutrition education and other services to at-risk, low-income children and pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women. From a policy perspective, it is of interest to assess the efficacy of the WIC program - how much, if at all, does the program improve the nutritional outcomes of WIC families? In this paper we address two important issues related to the WIC program that have not been extensively addressed in the past. First, although the WIC program is primarily devised with the intent of improving the nutrition of "target" children and mothers, it is possible that WIC may also change the... |