WIC PARTICIPATION AND MATERNAL BEHAVIOR: BREASTFEEDING AND WORK LEAVE

Lindsey Rose Bullinger and Tami Gurley-Calvez

Contemporary Economic Policy, 2016, vol. 34, issue 1, 158-172

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="coep12123-abs-0001"> We examine the effects of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program on breastfeeding outcomes and maternal employment decisions. This research expands the existing literature using an alternative identification strategy and a broader set of outcomes. Using data from the Infant Feeding Practices Study II, we control for selection bias into WIC using the variation in food prices as an instrumental variable. The results of this study are robust to a number of specification and falsification tests. We find WIC decreases exclusive breastfeeding by nearly 50% and increases work leave duration by over 20%. (JEL I18, I38)

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/coep.2016.34.issue-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:bla:coecpo:v:34:y:2016:i:1:p:158-172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... 5-7287&ref=1465-7287

Access Statistics for this article

Contemporary Economic Policy is currently edited by Brad R. Humphreys

More articles in Contemporary Economic Policy from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().