Abstract
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) reaches roughly half of all U.S. infants and couples nutritional support with substantial formula subsidies. This dissertation studies the program’s effects on infant feeding, its welfare value relative to an equivalent cash transfer, and whether the health consequences of formula consumption alter the case for in-kind provision. Across three chapters, I develop methods for empirical and welfare
analysis of in-kind transfer programs in settings with mismeasured eligibility, administered prices, and internalities.
Chapter 1 estimates the causal effect of WIC participation on breastfeeding initiation and duration. The program’s income eligibility threshold supplies a natural regression discontinuity, but the available survey data report household income in broad brackets rather than continuously, violating the precise-measurement assumption that point identification requires. I develop a partial identification framework that replaces this assumption with monotonicity and smoothness restrictions
calibrated from the data. The method yields bounds indicating that WIC participation reduces breastfeeding duration by 4 to 12 weeks among compliers at the eligibility threshold; the effect on initiation is consistently null. Price-subsidized formula acts as a substitute for continued breastfeeding rather than a deterrent to the initial attempt.
Chapter 2 evaluates whether WIC’s in-kind formula provision is welfare-improving relative to an equivalent cash transfer. I extend the marginal benefit–marginal cost framework of Lieber and Lockwood (2019) to incorporate two pecuniary features specific to WIC’s procurement structure: manufacturer rebates that reduce the government’s net cost of provision, and sole-source contracting that generates retail price incidence on non-participants. Under the preferred calibration, in-kind provision is welfare-superior to cash, but the case rests jointly on procurement rebates and the targeting benefit generated by income heterogeneity among eligible households. Neither channel is sufficient alone. Rebate savings are eroded by price incidence when income is homogeneous, and the targeting benefit cannot offset incidence absent rebates.
Chapter 3 asks whether the health consequences of formula feeding alter the welfare conclusion from Chapter 2. If mothers do not fully recognize the long-run health costs of formula consumption, their feeding decisions reflect a behavioral distortion that overstates the welfare value of the in-kind subsidy. Using administrative records from a large WIC agency, I establish that formula feeding causally worsens childhood weight outcomes, grounding both an internality correction and a fiscal externality through higher public health expenditures. Incorporating these forces into the
framework of Chapter 2, I find that the health consequences of formula feeding are sufficient to eliminate the welfare case for in-kind provision when all channels operate jointly.
