Increased WIC Eligibility and Birth Outcomes

Hyunkyu Ko

American Journal of Health Economics, 2024, vol. 10, issue 4, 635 - 669

Abstract: This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, on birth outcomes focusing on adjunctive eligibility, which allows Medicaid expansions to create variation in WIC eligibility. The results show that a 1 percentage point increase in WIC eligibility is associated with increase in average birth weight by 0.392 grams, which corresponds to an estimated treatment on the treated effect of 17.7 grams. WIC also reduces the incidence of small for gestational age by 0.019 percentage points, which corresponds to a treatment on the treated effect of 8.7 percent. I find little evidence that there is a strong causal link between WIC and low birth weight or preterm birth rates, for which many pieces of literature find a positive causation, while my findings on Medicaid indicate that increased Medicaid eligibility statistically significantly reduces the incidence of very low birth weight, preterm birth, and very preterm birth.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726122 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726122 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:amjhec:doi:10.1086/726122

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Health Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().