Research

Working Papers

Breastfeeding promotion and support is a core service of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which serves approximately half of all U.S. infants; however, program benefits include vouchers for infant formula, encouraging substitution away from breastfeeding among participating mothers. To estimate WIC’s effect on breastfeeding, I formalize a partial identification approach to address a common challenge in regression discontinuity designs: misclassification of treatment assignment due to measurement error in the running variable. Leveraging the program’s income eligibility cutoff, I apply this approach to bound the local average treatment effect (LATE) on the initiation and duration of breastfeeding. Using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), I find that participation in WIC reduces the probability of initiating breastfeeding by at least 3% and the duration of breastfeeding by at least 1 week. My findings are stable across alternative specifications and robust to more conservative identifying assumptions.

Participation frictions may operate equally on both the extensive and intensive margin. Using administrative data from the WIC program, I identify the effect of electronic benefit transfer (EBT) on extensive margin program participation, intensive margin utilization of benefits, and program administrative costs. I find that the adoption of EBT reduces the average monthly redemption of food benefits and does not affect program participation, administrative costs, or food security. Under theoretically and empirically motivated assumptions, I show that the intensive margin effects from EBT are welfare increasing, highlighting the importance of intensive margin participation in the evaluation of in-kind transfer programs.

Targeting with In-Kind Transfers and Fiscal Spillovers: Evidence from WIC

In-kind provision of public benefits can enhance targeting and reduce fiscal costs to the government; however, these cost savings may also affect market prices for consumers not directly exposed to the subsidy. I extend the framework of Lieber and Lockwood (2019) to incorporate both fiscal savings from rebate contracts and their effects on nonparticipant prices, applying this framework to the in-kind provision of infant formula by the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). I find minimal price responsiveness of demand among WIC consumers and little targeting benefit from in-kind provision. Rebate savings substantially raise the optimal subsidy level when considered in isolation but, at the same time, induce a sizable perverse targeting effect, increasing the retail price of formula for non-WIC consumers.

In-Kind Provision of Reduced-Quality Goods: Fiscal Efficiency and Welfare Implications