Health Economics Seminar

Brent Kreider, Professor of Economics
Iowa State University

Does the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) Improve Infant Health Outcomes?

We assess the causal effects of prenatal WIC participation on birth outcomes utilizing new partial identification methods to simultaneously address the selection and measurement error problems. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), we find that WIC reduces the prevalence of unhealthy birth weight by at least 14 percent and unhealthy gestation duration by at least 6 percent if participation is reported accurately. However, if even one percent of eligible women misreport their participation status, the effects of WIC on birth outcomes generally cannot be signed. We complement this partial identification approach by reporting point estimates from a parametric approach developed by Lewbel (2012) that uses second moment restrictions.