Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the WIC Program Phase I Report (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 30-50
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From page 30... ...
30 4 Potential Biases in Eligibility Estimates Concerns over high coverage rates for infants and postpartum women have led some observers to conclude that the Food and Nutrition Service's (FNS) estimates of the number of eligible individuals are biased and understate the true number of eligible people.
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From page 31... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 31 native data sources, such as the Survey of Income and Program Participation; the timeliness of the data used in the estimation; and assumptions concerning breastfeeding rates among postpartum women. In the second phase of the study, the panel plans to consider these issues as well as others, which are outlined in Chapter 6.
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From page 32... ...
32 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM the 1990 decennial census. These CPS control totals for infants and children were compared with weighted CPS sample estimates of infants and children.
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From page 33... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 33 for these two groups are too small to do so. In particular, black male and black female weights are each constrained to match totals for 2-year age intervals (i.e., infants and 1-year-olds together; 2- and 3- year olds together; and 4- and 5- year olds together)
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From page 34... ...
34 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM Eligibility Rules for WIC, Medicaid, TANF, and Food Stamps There are several notable differences in WIC income eligibility rules and the income eligibility rules of Medicaid, TANF, and food stamps. These differences are important in this context because some people who are not income eligible for WIC may be eligible for one of the other three programs, and could then be adjunctively eligible for WIC if they enroll in one of the other programs.
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From page 35... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 35 FNS methodology to estimate WIC eligibility uses annual income instead of monthly income. If a family has a month or two in which their income is low, they might apply for food stamps or TANF and become certified for those months and hence eligible for WIC.
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From page 36... ...
36 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM program eligibility in WIC and other means-tested programs, researchers have resorted to modifying the survey data at the individual level through the use of modeling techniques known as microsimulation models. For this study, the panel employed data produced by the Transfer Income Microsimulation 3 (TRIM3)
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From page 37... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 37 We estimated that 1.475 million infants and 6.307 million children in the nonterritorial United States would be income eligible for WIC during 1998.3 This closely approximates FNS's estimates of 1.488 million infants and 6.359 million children for 1998.4 We will call the 1.475 infants and 6.307 children the baseline estimates; they are presented in Table 4-2. The panel next examined the extent to which this procedure excluded TABLE 4-2 Adjunctive Eligibility Adjustments and Simulated Estimates of the Number of Income Eligible Infants and Children (counts are in millions)
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From page 38... ...
38 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM infants and children who were enrolled in TANF or the Food Stamp Program at some point during the year. If we add the infants and children who enrolled for at least one month in either one of these programs during 1998, then the estimate of WIC eligibility rises to 1.619 million for infants and 6.645 million for children.
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From page 39... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 39 estimates compared with the estimates that take food stamps and TANF adjunctive eligibility into account and a 64 percent increase from the baseline estimates. For children, this represents a 31 percent increase in eligibility estimates compared with the estimates that take Food Stamp and TANF adjunctive eligibility into account and a 38 percent increase from the baseline estimates.
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From page 40... ...
40 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM increase from the baseline estimates. For children, this represents a 17 percent increase in eligibility estimates compared with the estimates that take Food Stamp and TANF adjunctive eligibility into account and a 23 percent increase from the baseline estimates.
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From page 41... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 41 adjunctively eligible for WIC could be even larger if estimates counted all those eligible for Medicaid as adjunctively eligible for WIC regardless of their current Medicaid enrollment status, since more people are eligible for Medicaid but are not enrolled. USE OF ANNUAL VERSUS MONTHLY INCOME Use of annual income to estimate income eligibility has been highlighted as one possible barrier to accurately estimating WIC eligibility (U.S.
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From page 42... ...
42 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM TABLE 4-3 Monthly Income Adjustments and Simulated Estimates of the Number of Income Eligible Infants and Children (counts are in millions) Infants Children % Change % Change Counts from Baseline Counts from Baseline Baseline 1.475 6.307 Monthly income using "worst 1.845 25.1a 7.612 20.7a month" and no adjustment for adjunctive eligibility New baseline (with adjunctive 2.146 7.640 eligibility)
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From page 43... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 43 icaid. Thus, estimates of how many infants and children are adjunctively eligible based on enrollment in these programs already captures some who would be eligible if the worst income month criterion was used.
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From page 44... ...
44 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM Employing this definition of certification, the average number of children eligible for WIC during 1998 was 7.913 million (these results are not presented in a table)
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From page 45... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 45 The estimates of income eligible infants and children under the panel's new baseline estimates (including adjunctively eligible participants in the Food Stamp Program, TANF, and Medicaid) and these two scenarios are presented in Table 4-4.
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From page 46... ...
46 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM economic unit does not appear to be of much significance for estimating income eligibility and thus is not further explored here. ESTIMATION OF THE PREVALENCE OF NUTRITIONAL RISK To be fully eligible to receive WIC benefits, applicants must also be found to be at nutritional risk.
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From page 48... ...
48 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM estimates.8 Taking the midpoint of the two estimates of medical risk does not seem appropriate. Since each dataset measures prevalence of medical risk based on different criteria, the combined number estimated at medical risk should not be lower than the larger of the two.
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From page 49... ...
POTENTIAL BIASES IN ELIGIBILITY ESTIMATES 49 among income eligible groups. Recommendations concerning dietary risk criteria are to be released soon by the Institute of Medicine, but they will become standard only to the extent that they are adopted by FNS.
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From page 50... ...
50 ESTIMATING ELIGIBILITY AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIC PROGRAM eligibles were more ambiguous and small in size. Using a 6-month certification period for children instead of the 12-month certification period used currently in estimating eligibility results in an undercount of children of 4 percent if annual income is used, but in a 5 percent overcount if monthly income is used.
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