Long Term Own and Dynamic Complementarity Effects of the WIC Program

Grant description:

This project will first attempt to find the causal effect of exposure to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in-utero and in childhood on one’s long-term outcomes. She will utilize a difference-in-difference design to exploit the variation in roll-out of WIC programs by county and evaluate educational attainment and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood. Using a regression discontinuity design, she will also test whether WIC funding was actually distributed to counties in a nonrandom way. In addition, she plans to examine whether and how the effect of WIC exposure is strengthened if one is also exposed to other large-scale public programs such as Head Start or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, contributing to our understanding of the long-run effects of potentially complementary income support programs.