An Examination of an Alternative WIC Food Cost Inflation Index – Final Report to Congress
Economic Research Service Food Policy Research Section and
Office of Analysis and Evaluation, Food and Nutrition Service
No 368984, Miscellaneous Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service
Abstract:
Excerpts from the Introduction: The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) attempted to develop a new inflation index to consider for use in the funding formula used to allocate food funds to States in the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children, commonly known as the WIC Program. In 1990, in response to a large and unanticipated rise in food costs, FNS began developing the index with the goal to better project inflationary trends in the WIC Program. Later that year, in the language accompanying the FY 1991 WIC appropriation, Congress directed FNS to "develop an inflation index for use in adjusting the WIC allocations based upon foods that are prescribed for use in the WIC food package." The index was developed by USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) with assistance from the Office of Analysis and Evaluation, FNS and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U. S. Department of Labor. The index was developed to determine if it could eventually replace the Thrifty Food Plan Index in the WIC funding formula used to allocate WIC grants to states and potentially to develop WIC budget and participation estimates and to monitor WIC food costs. This paper presents the index model, discusses issues related to its use, and includes recommendations regarding the use of the WIC index.
Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Demand and Price Analysis; Public Economics; Research Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67
Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/368984/files/WIC-FoodCostInflationIndex.pdf (application/pdf)
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:ags:uersmp:368984
DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.368984
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Miscellaneous Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().