Women, Infants, and Children

The federal nutritional assistance program, commonly known as WIC or Women, Infants, and Children, provides low income mothers with food assistance to provide herself and child with healthy groceries.  There are certain eligibility requirements that the mother must meet to qualify for assistance, there are four main categories; categorical, residential, income, and nutrition-risk.  The women who is applying for assistance must be pregnant, breastfeeding, or mothering a child up to five years of age.  You must be living in the state for which you are applying, but unlike other government programs, there is no time limit to be living within the state before you are eligible.  Each state has set a limit to which the applicants income must meet or fall below this rate to qualify.  Lastly, all applicants and children must go to monthly check-ups to assess nutritional health of the mother and children.  They must rule the mother or children as being of nutritional-risk or diet-risk.  This means that if you or your child is anemic, underweight, history of poor pregnancy, poor diet, etc., you should qualify for this type of nutritional assistance.  

The Department of Agriculture created Women, Infants, and Children nutritional assistance in 1972 to provide health assistance to low-income families to improve the health and well-being of pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children.  Most states will allocate money to participants through a reloadable card, which will be added monthly at the regular check-ups the mother and children must attend.  There are nearly 50,000 stores nationwide who participate in the WIC program and allow the government issued cards to be used as payment.  This allows women to purchase fruits, vegetables, baby formula, baby food, whole grains, milk and other fresh foods.  

I have created my own pros and cons list to this program. Some positive things I have found that this program offers are:

• Women who are breastfeeding can make the most from this program.  They can purchase healthy foods and have a higher intake in vitamins and minerals through natural foods that will be transferred to the infant through the breast milk.  Once the child stops breastfeeding, formula becomes the main expense on the WIC monthly budget for the mother due to how expensive it is.
• Breast-pumps are provided to new mothers who are in need and cannot afford one and promotes the child drinking breast milk over formula. 
• Qualified foods you may purchase include all fruits and vegetables, whole grains, formula and baby food, certain cereals, milk, eggs, meats, etc.  

There are negative aspects as there are in every government program.  Some of the cons I found are:

• Appointments can be hard for new mothers to attend each month. This makes it harder in rural areas where women must drive some distance to get to the nearest WIC clinic.
• This program does not cover the costs for any special diet formula the infant may need unless they have a serious metabolic disorder.  Babies who are lactose intolerant or low iron who need a specialized formula will not be covered by the WIC program.  This leaves a large bill for new mothers who are having to buy even more expensive, specialized formula. 
• Once the money allocated for the year for WIC programs, when the money runs out, it is gone until the following fiscal year.  The more families who need help, the faster the money will run out.
• There is also poor fraud control with this program, mothers are applying for assistance and then cashing out the money that they have not spent for the month.  [Where did you get this idea?  Is there a study or an article that makes this claim? I'm aware of studies of trafficking (selling food benefits in exchange for cash) in the SNAP, but I've never heard of such a study of WIC. I suppose families could re-sell the milk and cereal and juice and cheese they buy with WIC coupons. I wonder how commonly that occurs.]

There are both positive and negative aspects to this program; however, the benefits for women and children seem to outweigh the negative aspects of it.  I encourage government officials to continue to promote and fight for these nutritional assistance programs.