Need To Foster Optimal Use of Resources in the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

GAO reviewed the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) operates. GAO attempted to determine how to obtain the maximum benefit from the use of WIC resources, focusing on: (1) the extent to which state and local WIC agencies attempt to target WIC benefits on the basis of need; (2) FNS procedures for targeting WIC benefits; (3) state and local WIC agencies' verification of applicants' eligibility for benefits; (4) the impact of FNS and state agency fund allocation procedures on state and local program operations and benefits targeting; and (5) opportunities to improve targeting, fund allocation, and eligibility determination procedures to maximize the beneficial impact of WIC resources.

GAO found that: (1) while WIC benefits targeting is important because WIC is not an open-ended entitlement and some eligible beneficiaries may not be served, FNS has not emphasized targeting as a major policy objective, encouraged states to emphasize targeting, or assessed targeting performance in its evaluations of state and local program administration; (2) WIC agencies are only required to target benefits when they reach the highest participation level that available funds will support; (3) in states with no targeting programs, fewer than half of the WIC beneficiaries were in the eligible groups considered most needy; and (4) FNS allows state WIC agencies to establish their own nutritional risk eligibility criteria and does not require uniform nutritional risk criteria. GAO also found that: (1) FNS has not established uniform guidance for documenting and verifying applicants' income and family size; (2) state and local procedures for documentation and verification of income eligibility are not always sufficient to ensure that only eligible individuals receive benefits; and (3) state and local agencies rarely verify the accuracy of unsupported income information provided by WIC applicants. In addition, GAO found that: (1) variable funding actions have caused instability in program growth; and (2) this instability, combined with FNS changes in funding allocation formulas and the FNS legal obligation to recover and reallocate unspent WIC funds in any given fiscal year, has created pressures against targeting and effective case-load management at the state and local level.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: John W. Harman Team: General Accounting Office: Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division Phone: (202) 512-5138