The food assistance program for mothers and young children has gotten more popular. Here’s why that could be a problem.
X
The food assistance program for mothers and young children has gotten more popular. Here’s why that could be a problem.
January 6, 2025
Photo credit: SDI Productions/Getty Images
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) has been undersubscribed since 2016, in many years serving only around half of the mothers and children who are eligible. Even though it reaches 6.7 million low-income people, including 40 percent of the babies born in the U.S., WIC has had wiggle room in its budget, which has helped it deal with partisan funding debates and the vicissitudes of the economy.
Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers.
Already a member?
Login
The program, which turned 50 last year, serves people who are pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, or have infants or children up to age 5. Services include monthly checks or vouchers for healthy foods, as well as personalized education, breastfeeding support, and referrals to other services. These provide crucial support to those struggling with food insecurity, especially with a recent surge in food prices and deepening hunger across the country. And WIC participation has been shown to improve birth outcomes, lower infant mortality, and reduce Medicaid expenses, among other benefits.
Biden’s USDA made increasing participation in WIC a priority. To enroll more people, agency staff fought for increasing the benefit to participants, creating a food package that hewed closer to current nutrition standards and incorporating new technologies to make participation easier. Perhaps as a result, participation has been ticking up over the last two years. With a new administration intent on cost cutting, experts say they’re fearful about undoing what they see as incremental progress made.
The program is permanently authorized but its funding is not guaranteed, as opposed to an entitlement like the National School Lunch Program, in which every eligible student is assured the benefit. Each year, Congress provides the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with a specific amount of funds for state agencies to operate WIC. Increased participation could mean that participants are turned away if allocated funds run out, or in the event of a government shutdown.
If Project 2025 is any predictor of the next administration’s agenda, the program could see significant funding cuts.
After 25 years of bipartisan Congressional support for fully funding the program, WIC funding has become more political during the last few rounds of appropriations. Budget plans by both the House and Senate in 2023 included cuts to the nutrition benefit program for the following year.
That prompted the USDA to warn of a $1 billion shortfall in estimated funding need for WIC—the cost of providing six months of benefits. A shortfall of this magnitude, the USDA said, “presents states with difficult, untenable decisions about how to manage the program.”
WIC ended up getting $7 billion in 2024, $1 billion more than the 2023 enacted level, but talk of cuts worried child nutrition and anti-hunger advocates.
“The biggest concern is that are we going to run into what we did last year with a potential shortfall in funding,” said Meghan Maroney, who leads the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Federal Child Nutrition Programs initiatives. “We narrowly avoided a crisis and were facing potential waiting lists for WIC. At the eleventh hour we avoided that, but we’re scarred by the idea that this would happen again.”
If Project 2025 is any predictor of the next administration’s agenda, the program could see significant funding cuts. And if tariffs were to raise food prices, that quickly impacts what it costs to administer the program and how many people could be served.
Meanwhile, participation in the program grew by 5.3 percent between 2021 and 2023, which heightens concerns that full participation might leave some low-income mothers and young children without assistance. WIC has a triage plan in the event they can’t serve everyone.
The reason for the uptick tracks with higher inflation and food costs, but it is also a response to improvements to the program itself, said Maroney.
“WIC has seen a lot of innovation over the past several years. There were flexibilities that were tried out during the pandemic that people would like to see implemented long term: online shopping benefits, virtual online registration, and enhanced fruit and vegetable benefits all contribute to the long-term success of the program,” she said.
Bottom line, WIC is now easier to use, and the benefits are more desirable.
Mahagani Jenkins lives in Denver and has been participating in WIC with her 1-year-old son for the past year. For her, the program has been invaluable. “I was able to get formula, baby food, and fruits and vegetables for him, even though he wasn’t quite ready for that, so it was a nutrition benefit for myself as well,” she said. “It allowed me to have extra spending money to spend on more diapers and wipes. It has also allowed me to reach out for housing . . . [and] other networks. It’s been very beneficial for us.”
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, passed during the pandemic, gave the USDA $490 million to allow states to temporarily offer a boost in the benefits, roughly doubling the benefit to children and nearly tripling the benefit to pregnant people and new mothers.
During the pandemic, a cash-value benefit voucher was added to allow participants to purchase fruits and vegetables as part of their WIC food package, providing up to $35 per child and adult, per month. This aimed to align the WIC food packages with the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans and to reflect recommendations from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as a means of improving maternal and child nutrition.
In April 2024, the USDA published a final rule revising the WIC food packages, making permanent that cash value benefit for fruits and vegetables, currently $26 for child participants, $47 for pregnant and postpartum participants, and $52 for mostly and fully breastfeeding participants.
“There have been tremendous strides in strengthening WIC with the new food package that came out in April,” said Alexandra Ashbrook, director of special projects and initiatives at Food Research & Action Center, an anti-hunger nonprofit. Although the revision included adding beans and canned fish, and more whole grain options, the fruit and vegetable options are proving the most popular. “More fruit and vegetable benefits are one of the reasons the program is making gains. We know what an important tool it is, and how WIC participation is tied to multiple health benefits.”
Other advocates worry that if Trump in his second administration brings back a version of his “public charge” rule, which would have denied green cards to immigrants who use SNAP and other public benefits, WIC participation could falter. WIC-eligible people might not use the program because they don’t want their names in the system for fear of jeopardizing their legal immigration status.
WIC historically required everyone seeking to enroll or re-enroll in the program to do so in person at a WIC office. New applicants had to be screened for iron deficiency anemia through blood work, and babies and toddlers had height/length and weight checks conducted in offices. Participants were also often required to pick up the benefits themselves from WIC offices. It was an attempt to monitor maternal and young children’s health, but schlepping to these office visits could be onerous for mothers with transportation problems or young kids to wrangle.
During the pandemic, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service allowed WIC agencies to issue benefits remotely, and participants to enroll or re-enroll in the program without visiting a clinic in person and to postpone certain medical tests. It even allowed agencies that didn’t have online benefit services to issue up to four months of benefits on EBT cards at one time so people didn’t have to make frequent office visits.
“More fruit and vegetable benefits are one of the reasons the program is making gains.”
For Jenkins, that benefit has proven extremely helpful. “Once I was certified, I was able to have access to my money immediately via a debit card,” she said. “They had a brochure that broke down the brands I was able to get. . . . Every six months it’s updated. They make it comfortable for you and your child.”
The waiver that allows these remote services expires in September 2026. If it goes away, the requirement of in-person applications, recertification appointments, and benefit receipt comes back. Just about everyone using the program now has never experienced that requirement, says Ali Hard, policy director of the National WIC Association, and a shift could create significant barriers to families staying on the program.
In a satisfaction survey, she says one of the big things participants appreciated was the ease of getting remote services and being able to conduct meetings over the phone or use the web portal for their recertification appointments.
“People appreciate that convenience. It puts WIC on par with other services,” Hard said.
WIC has been slower than SNAP, the food assistance program formerly known as food stamps, to offer online shopping.
“Lack of modernization is the thing holding the program back,” said Carolyn Vega, associate director of policy analysis at Share Our Strength. “There are younger users of the program, and it has to keep up with the times and be more flexible with job schedules and family schedules.”
Enabling the use of benefits for online shopping was piloted in seven states initially in 2020, according to Hard, with 14 states now doing some kind of pilot program, spearheaded by the Center for Nutrition and Health Impact. Walmart has been a vendor in some of the pilots and Instacart has partnered with WIC to deliver products to program participants. But the future of online shopping now hangs in the balance.
“The agency is putting out a final rule about online shopping, to be published in February. We hope that stays on track and does not get slowed down and that the USDA keeps supporting these pilots,” Hard said. Orchestrating online shopping is complicated by the fact that, while SNAP participants all have the same benefit, WIC-approved foods differ state by state.
“Setting up an approved products list with very specific SKUs is complicated,” Hard said, with 50 states and all the territories expected to maintain complex data systems of their own.
Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) is Congress’s process of updating the permanent statutes that authorize child nutrition programs such as WIC, the National School Lunch Program, and the Summer Food Service Program. Congress reviews the laws governing these programs through the reauthorization process, including things like eligibility criteria, funding levels, and program benefits.
The last reauthorization was the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which expired in September 2015. In 2021, leaders in both the Senate and House expressed interest in advancing CNR, but it got bogged down in political wrangling.
Without CNR, says Whitney Carlson, national recruitment and retention campaign manager for the National WIC Association, “we lose the opportunity to make critical program updates, like what we’re seeing in WIC with the need to authorize modern service models like virtual services.”
She said there were many important proposals in the House CNR bill that would have improved the program.
“These are common-sense improvements like allowing multiple family members to consolidate their certification and recertification appointments so they can get them all done at once,” she said. “It also would have extended WIC eligibility to age 6 so that there is no gap for kids before they start kindergarten.”
There is widespread consensus that the process is unlikely to be taken up by Congress in the next administration, according to Vega.
“The farm bill is thought to be a more pressing bill to be considered and is likely to take up more time and space in the next Congress,” she said. “If there’s never an appetite for a CNR, you lose the opportunity for that comprehensive revisiting of the entire program.”
If WIC loses support in Congress, the new and planned benefits could disappear—and funding reductions might mean waitlists for millions of people like Jenkins and her son. “Waitlists would impact families like mine because I’m a single parent with one sole income that me and my child have to survive off of,” she said.
July 30, 2025
From Oklahoma to D.C., a food activist works to ensure that communities can protect their food systems and their future.
Like the story?
Join the conversation.