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Questions
1. Did any of the sources involve-- or summarize other studies that involved-- quantitative
analysis or languages other than English?
The source “Evaluating WIC” by Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis used quantitative
analysis in their study. They began their article with a summary of the program and then digested
the program based on the pros and cons of funding, locations, and eligibility. “Improved
Oversight of Income Eligibility Determination Needed” by the USDA provided many tables and
graphs as well as descriptive analysis, as did ““Medicaid Policies and Eligibility for WIC” by
Kimball Lewis and Marilyn Ellwood. The government census I used also provided quantitative
descriptive data by revealing multiple statistics about who participants who received WIC were.
2. If the answer to question #1 is yes, explain how you learned the relevant quantitative
analysis or languages and/or identify specifically which sources were relevant and make a
clear case why any such use of quantitative analysis or of other languages was incidental
only. (If you cannot accurately provide such explanation, then you should not be using
such sources and should consequently develop a different paper topic.) Descriptive
statistics do not constitute “quantitative analysis.”
I learned the relevant quantitative analysis by reading closely into what the authors were
describing as well as looking at the tables and figures provided. In order to insure that the article
was not simply a summary of other sources, I looked at the sources that they had used as well.
After reading Besharov and Germanis’ source, I looked at their own work cited to see where they

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received their information and how statistics and information were originally portrayed. Many of
the tables and graphs were basic figures showing the growth of WIC based on the amount of
recipients and funds. I know that the source did not simply summarize information because they
did not base arguments off of information from other authors. The WIC evaluation by the GAO,
“Improved Oversight of Income Eligibility Determination Needed” was a valued source because
it was an analysis of administrative data and statistics and could be trusted. The graphs and tables
presented focused on how income and government funds related to the amount of participants of
WIC. A few of my research was based from the USDA. One particular article was especially
helpful, “Medicaid Policies and Eligibility for WIC” by Kimball Lewis and Marilyn Ellwood,
because it had many figures that explicitly showed how Medicaid policies were affecting the
amount of WIC recipients and eligibility. It also showed states in which the effect was not that
great and therefore gave me another perspective. Using the government census for WIC data was
also helpful because it provided detailed statistics of every sociological aspect of WIC
participants.
3. What is the central program and policy problem the paper examines and what is the
paper’s central argument? Then answer in one or two sentences.
The central program of this research is the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). The central question of this research
is: Does eligibility for WIC need to be more closely monitored? Does the expansion of
Medicaid allow for the expansion of WIC by introducing more lenient income eligibility?

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Appendix
I began looking for my sources by going to the USDA site to find out what the
basics of the program were and what the intentions of the program were. The USDA
provided me with a general description and definition of the program-a definition that I
had seen countless times in my research and that had come up by simply typing in “WIC”
to the Google search engine. I also typed in “WIC census data” to find the government
census. The source was beneficial because it revealed how many women were single
mothers which correlates well with the argument that eligibility is hard to determine
based upon household income due to teenage mothers living with parents and single
mothers who are living with significant others.
I also googled “WIC eligibility, GAO” because I had already found sources from
the USDA and I thought that since funding for WIC was from Congress than a report to
Congress would be beneficial. This source was especially helpful because it provided
information that was similar to “Evaluating WIC” but provided more information that is
present and therefore allowed for comparisons of funding and participation.
Next I decided to Wikipedia the program. Although I did not use any of the
information directly off of the Wikipedia site, I did use the work cited page to look at
possible sources for myself. This is how I found Besharov and Germanis’ article
“Evaluating WIC”. The article showed me multiple perspectives by providing benefits as
well as critiques of WIC and by providing counterarguments. I found the article
“Medicaid Policies and Eligibility for WIC” by Kimball Lewis and Marilyn Ellwood by
looking at the work cited of Besharov and Germanis’ article. This was helpful because it
was explaining what articles had said about the relation of Medicaid to WIC in more

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detail with more description on how exactly Medicaid could affect the distribution of
WIC benefits.
WIC v. Medicaid: Who Gets Help?
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) is
a means-tested program specifically designed for pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers,
nonbreastfeeding postpartum mothers, infants, and children under the age of five (USDA). In
2000, Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis’ article was published, “Evaluating WIC”, they
claimed that almost half of all American infants and a quarter of children ages 1-4, as well as the
same amount of pregnant women, received WIC benefits (Besharov, Germanis, 128). WIC
provides nutritious food to low-income families as well as nutrition counseling, education,
screening and referrals to other welfare and health services. Most state WIC programs provide
vouchers to recipients that are used at authorized grocery stores (USDA).
WIC is a federal grant program in which Congress allows a specific amount of money to
be used for the program each year (USDA). In order to be eligible financially, an applicant’s
income must be at or below 185% of the U.S. poverty line ($44, 123 for a family of four) (USDA
Nutrition Program Facts). In the 2011 fiscal year, WIC was a $7.2 billion program and had 9
million participants (Government Accountability Office, 4). The average monthly benefit cost
per participant in 2011 was $47 to the federal government but the average benefit value per
participant was $59 (GAO, 5). In the 2013 fiscal year, WIC had 8.6 million participants per
month and Congress funded WIC with $6.522 billion, a difference of $6,501,400,000 from 2011
(USDA Nutrition Program Facts). The increase of funds granted by Congress reveals that women
and children could appeal to more sympathetic policies than other groups might, considering that

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Congress normally has a great difficulty of passing policies as well as the fact that many citizens
are suspicious of means-tested programs and therefore expansion of funds is rare because of
worries concerning reelection for politicians. WIC services are provided in schools, hospitals,
and county health departments, public housing sites, as well as elsewhere (USDA).
WIC was a pilot program in 1972 and became a permanent program just two years later.
WIC was formalized as an amendment to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (USDA, Regulatory
History). The program was a response to a meeting between physicians and officials from the
U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and the USDA (USDA, Regulatory
History). The White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health in 1969 found that
“nutritional deficiencies among low-income women and children threatened their health and led
to higher medical costs” (Besharov, Germanis, 123-24). Nutritional risk is defined as
“medically-based risks such as anemia, underweight, overweight, history of pregnancy
complications, or poor pregnancy outcomes” and “Dietary risks, such as inappropriate
nutrition/feeding practices” (USDA Nutrition Facts). More nutritious food could assist in making
families healthier and therefore they would not have to seek medical help as often.
In 1997 it was claimed by the Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman, that WIC could have
been the best social program to exist (Besharov, Germanis, 123). However, Besharov and
Germanis claim that WIC benefits are not as great as previously portrayed and that most
improvements in diet and nutrition were for prenatal subjects, about only 11% of the total
participants (Besharov, Germanis, 124). WIC’s strict spending requirements prevent enough time
spent for nutritional counseling, one of the benefits that the program is supposed to provide:
“WIC’s rigid spending rules…effectively prevent local programs from spending more than about

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30 minutes for nutritional education every 6 months with clients and preclude enriching food
packages with, for example, iron supplements (Besharov, Germanis, 124). There is a saying that
if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach him how to fish he eats for a lifetime.
The same notion could be applied to the WIC program: providing the food is only half of the
battle but without the education on how to use those supplements properly, the benefits are not
working to the best of their ability.
Benefits of WIC are that he food packages that WIC provides are high in vitamins A and
C as well as proteins which are normally lacking in the diets of the recipients. The foods
normally include milk, eggs, cheese, peanut butter, beans, and iron-fortified infant cereal and
formula (Besharov, Germanis, 125). The food packages are specifically shaped for individual
recipients: “…if it is known that a WIC participant has high cholesterol, the standard food
package may be modified accordingly, replacing such high-cholesterol foods as eggs and regular
peanut butter with such low-cholesterol foods as reduced-fat peanut butter and skim milk”
(Besharov, Germanis, 125). WIC refers participants to other health and social services, such as
prenatal care classes or to drug-and-alcohol-addiction services (Besharov, Germanis, 128).
Although this is helpful, the limited on-site programs and need to refer participants to other
locations may result in recipients giving up due to frustration or costs to get to the different
locations (Besharov, Germanis, 128). The correlation between Medicaid and WIC could be a
partial result of both programs being created to assist the health of the poor.
Limitations of WIC are that it does not include non-food supplements or vitamins,
products that may be necessary for recipients. Furthermore, the packages are not based on the
income of families or the size of the families. Therefore, a mother with a higher income and only

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one child would receive the same amount as a mother with three or four children and a lower
income that has to be divided among more people. Instead, the benefits are only defined by the
age and pregnancy status of recipients. Although the lack of benefits is discouraging, it is true
that WIC is not meant to provide the total food for recipients, it is only meant to supplement the
food that they purchase themselves and they may still receive benefits from other programs such
as Food Stamps (Besharov, Germanis, 125).
Another complication, as cited by Besharov and Germanis, is that the problems that
Americans are facing have changed tremendously since the introduction of WIC: “WIC was
developed almost 30 years ago, when hunger was the major nutrition-related problem facing
disadvantaged Americans. Since then, hunger has been superseded by overweightness as our
most serious nutrition-related problem” (Besharov, Germanis, 124). Instead of families having
health issues due to lack of food, the issue now is that there is too much unhealthy food.
Moreover, much of the unhealthy and fast foods are cheaper than healthy foods which align with
many low-income families having nutrition-related health issues. The dollar menu of a fast-food
restaurant can be much more appealing than hundreds of dollars in groceries.
The greatest issue of WIC is that not all of the families that fall under the eligibility of
WIC receive benefits in some states because the program is not fully funded to that level of
benefits (Besharov, Germanis, 129). The amount of recipients is based upon what Congress
decides. WIC holds fairly loose criteria in which a participant needs to have a low-income and be
at nutritional risk, allowing a vast amount of participants. As a result, many mothers and children
who may need the benefits more than other recipients could be turned down after WIC has
reached its limits. Part of the issue regarding WIC is that much of the expansion of funding for

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the benefits was to include more people rather than to provide more benefits for the neediest
families.
Besharov and Germanis claim that lenient Medicaid eligibility could skew the eligibility
of WIC to include more participants than expected because if someone is a recipient of Medicaid
than they fit the financial requirements to acquire WIC benefits (Besharov, Germanis, 133). If a
person is a recipient of benefits from SNAP or TANF than they are automatically eligible to
receive WIC benefits as well (GAO, 1-2). In 2010 GAO found that 2 percent of WIC
participants were eligible solely because they had been accepted into another program, as they
had incomes that were over the federally mandated income limit (GAO, Highlights).
Some states have expanded their eligibility for benefits like TANF, SNAP, and
Medicaid, and therefore they potentially increased the amount of people who were eligible for
WIC (GAO, 2). An expansion of benefits to include lower middle-class families instead of more
funding for impoverished families could be a misuse of funds (Besharov, Germanis, 124).
Kimball Lewis and Marilyn Ellwood have explored the how Medicaid expansion could cause
WIC to expand as a result due to the fact that Medicaid recipients do not have to provide
evidence of their income when applying for WIC. According to Lewis and Ellwood, Medicaid
expansions have made it possible for people who have an income above 185% of the poverty
guideline to receive WIC benefits (Ellwood, Lewis, xi). If a pregnant woman has an increase in
income during her pregnancy than it is typical that she would still receive Medicaid benefits
because it is federally mandated that pregnant and postpartum women are to be permitted to stay
in the program if their incomes rise (Ellwood, Lewis, 7).

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Due to the allowance into the program, women with higher incomes are able to receive
WIC benefits. According to table II.2, California (200%), Hawaii (300%), Minnesota (275%),
Rhode Island (250%), Tennessee (185+%), Vermont (225%), and Washington (200%) all had
income guidelines that are higher than the guideline for WIC (185%) in 1996 and therefore
allowed more people to become beneficiaries than who are actually eligible based on income
(Ellwood, Lewis, 9-10). If a beneficiary had received AFDC in three out of the last six months,
then states are required to provide a year of Medicaid coverage, despite any increase in their
income (Ellwood, Lewis, 11). If a family has an increased income and therefore may not need
the benefits as much as other families, they still receive benefits for 12 months and therefore can
get WIC as well. Shown by table IV.3, states could have a larger amount of WIC recipients than
the amount of people eligible. An example of this occurring is Alabama in 1995 when there were
more WIC participants than the amount eligible (35,439 compared to 29, 640) (Ellwood, Lewis,
33). Differences in state eligibility create an environment in which some states are more
favorable than others in terms of assistance for pregnant women and children. Furthermore, if
Medicaid continues to expand than WIC would too as a result of the relationship between
programs, perhaps creating a conflict between amount of funds available and amount of people
receiving benefits. It is important to make sure that enough funds go toward the most needy
rather than the most amount of people and expansion of Medicaid has stopped that from
effectively happening.
The gray areas of WIC are partially a result of states differing in how they determine who
is eligible for benefits. Some states look at the income of participants in the last 30 days, some in
the last 60 days, and some are not clearly defined at all (GAO, 9). Although differing

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expectations could shift eligibility, I do not suspect that one month would make much difference
in calculating average income. Furthermore, family size could be interpreted differently based on
state: “42% of states give additional discretion to local agencies in determining the WIC family
size or economic unit” (GAO, 10). The study further claimed that 9/10 states reviewed held
discretion in figuring out the family size of potential applicants (GAO, 10). If a young mother is
living with her parents than it would be particularly difficult to determine her income because
she could be receiving financial help from her family. Income data is also collected only once,
the date in which the application is filled out. Therefore, changes in income may not be caught
(GAO, 13).
WIC participants tend to be younger mothers who contribute to the need for assistance
because older women have had more opportunity to get a degree and establish some sort of
career. The census of 1995 also revealed that about 13% of WIC participants were mothers and
3% were under 18 years old. The average age of mothers was 20 years old, two years younger
than the average woman who was not a WIC participant (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1995). About
1 in 16 mothers were white who received WIC benefits, in comparison to 1 in 10 mothers that
were black. 1 in 8 mothers who received benefits were of Hispanic descent (compared to 1 in 16
who were not). About half of mothers who were WIC recipients were married in 1995, showing
that about half of recipients were single mothers. According to the surveys, WIC mothers were
more likely to have their first child out of wedlock (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1995).
About 34% of WIC mothers had a high school diploma and 93% of mothers were not
enrolled in school. Only about 25% of mothers who participated in the WIC program had jobs
(U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1995). About 70 percent of mothers lived in metropolitan areas and

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about half lived in central cities (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1995). Considering the data gathered
from the census, one could include that the average WIC mother was younger, lived in urban
areas, and were single mothers. WIC mothers were also more likely to be black or Hispanic. The
general populations of women who are receiving WIC are poor, single mothers in urban areas. It
is detrimental to the program if people who do not need the benefits are receiving them.
WIC benefits and eligibility should be closely monitored if eligibility is to be partially
determined by the participation of Medicaid. This would have to be enforced by local agencies
who determine what the household size is of an applicant and who should also use the income of
the family to determine eligibility and not Medicaid if the income guidelines for Medicaid are
larger than for WIC in that state. If more women and children are receiving the benefits than
what are actually needed, than it is a misuse of funding and it is stopping the impoverished from
getting the amount of help they need. If all recipients do genuinely need WIC, than more focus
should still be on the most impoverished. Furthermore, lenient eligibility for means-tested
programs only fuels potential resentment from citizens if they think that families are receiving
help that they don’t necessarily need.

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Work Cited
 Besharov, Douglas J., and Peter Germanis. "Evaluating WIC." Sage Journals. SAGE,
Apr. 2000. Web. 8 Nov. 2014.
<http%3A%2F%2Ferx.sagepub.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu%2Fcontent%2F24%2F2%2F123
.full.pdf%2Bhtml>.
 Davis, David E. "Bidding for WIC Infant Formula Contracts: Do Non-WIC Customers
Subsidize WIC Customers?" American Journal of Agricultural Economics 94.1 (2012):
80-96. USDA, 2009. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/447248/err73c_3_.pdf>.
 GAO. WIC Program: Improved Oversight of Income Eligibility Determination Needed.
Washington: Office, 1970. GAO. Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/652480.pdf>.
 Lewis, Kimball, and Marilyn Ellwood. "Medicaid Policies and Eligibility for
WIC." Food and Nutrition Service. USDA, 1 Oct. 1999. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.fns.usda.gov/medicaid-policies-and-eligibility-wic>.
 Mothers Who Receive WIC Benefits: Fertility and Socioeconomic Characteristics.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration,
Bureau of the Census, 1995. Web. <http://www.census.gov/sipp/sb95_29.pdf>.
 "WIC Participant and Program Characteristics 2012 Final Report." (n.d.): n. pag. USDA.
United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, Dec. 2013. Web. 8
Nov. 2014. <http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/WICPC2012.pdf>.
 "Women, Infants and Children (WIC)." WIC Benefits and Services. United States
Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, 17 July 2014. Web. 08 Nov.
2014. <http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/wic-benefits-and-services>.