TY - JOUR
T1 - Mothers as insurance
T2 - Family spillovers in WIC
AU - Bitler, Marianne
AU - Currie, Janet
AU - Hoynes, Hilary
AU - Ruffini, Krista
AU - Schulkind, Lisa
AU - Willage, Barton
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program on Evidence for Action: Investigator-Initiated Research to Build a Culture of Health. We thank seminar participants at Cornell, UC Davis, Columbia, CMC, UC Riverside; conference participants at the Southern Economic Association, NBER, ASSA, and the Institute for Poverty Research; and Sebastian Calonico, Melanie Guldi, Zhuan Pei, Diane Schanzenbach, Shu Shen, Travis Smith, and Shannon Whaley for useful comments and Danielle Lee and Lorrene Ritchie for discussions about measurement of biomarkers. Ashley Frost, Annie Laurie Hines, John Iselin, Matthew Jarvis and Rachel Schorno provided excellent research assistance. The findings and conclusions in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Research Data Center, the National Center for Health Statistics, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of any organization.
Funding Information:
☆ This project was supported with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program on Evidence for Action: Investigator-Initiated Research to Build a Culture of Health. We thank seminar participants at Cornell, UC Davis, Columbia, CMC, UC Riverside; conference participants at the Southern Economic Association, NBER, ASSA, and the Institute for Poverty Research; and Sebastian Calonico, Melanie Guldi, Zhuan Pei, Diane Schanzenbach, Shu Shen, Travis Smith, and Shannon Whaley for useful comments and Danielle Lee and Lorrene Ritchie for discussions about measurement of biomarkers. Ashley Frost, Annie Laurie Hines, John Iselin, Matthew Jarvis and Rachel Schorno provided excellent research assistance. The findings and conclusions in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Research Data Center, the National Center for Health Statistics, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of any organization.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a widely used program. Previous research shows that WIC improves birth outcomes, but evidence about impacts on older children and their families is limited. We use a regression discontinuity leveraging a loss of benefits at age five when children become ineligible for WIC and examine nutritional and laboratory outcomes for adults and children. We find little impact on children who aged out of the program. But caloric intake falls and food insecurity increases among adult women, suggesting that mothers protect children by consuming less themselves. We find no effect on others in the household.
AB - The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a widely used program. Previous research shows that WIC improves birth outcomes, but evidence about impacts on older children and their families is limited. We use a regression discontinuity leveraging a loss of benefits at age five when children become ineligible for WIC and examine nutritional and laboratory outcomes for adults and children. We find little impact on children who aged out of the program. But caloric intake falls and food insecurity increases among adult women, suggesting that mothers protect children by consuming less themselves. We find no effect on others in the household.
KW - WIC, spillovers, child nutrition and health, maternal responses
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85167972821&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85167972821&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102784
DO - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102784
M3 - Article
C2 - 37481945
AN - SCOPUS:85167972821
SN - 0167-6296
VL - 91
JO - Journal of Health Economics
JF - Journal of Health Economics
M1 - 102784
ER -