IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uersib/291947.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The WIC Fruit and Vegetable Cash Voucher: Does Regional Price Variation Affect Buying Power?

Author

Listed:
  • Leibtag, Ephraim
  • Kumcu, Aylin

Abstract

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental foods to low-income women, infants, and children at nutritional risk. Since October 2009, WIC packages have included a fi xed-value voucher for purchasing fruits and vegetables. Although this should help increase fruit and vegetable consumption for all WIC participants, regional price variation could lead to different buying power—and nutritional benefi ts—across the country. Using 2004-06 Nielsen Homescan data, the authors examine the prices of fruits and vegetables (fresh, frozen, and canned) in 26 metropolitan market areas to determine how price variations affect the voucher’s purchasing power. The authors fi nd that the 20 most commonly purchased fruits and vegetables cost 30-70 percent more in the highest priced market areas than in the lowest, implying that WIC participants in more expensive areas might be able to purchase fewer fruits and vegetables than those living where these items are cheaper. The lowest priced market for fruits and vegetables was the Nashville, Birmingham, Memphis, and Louisville area, while the highest was San Francisco.

Suggested Citation

  • Leibtag, Ephraim & Kumcu, Aylin, 2011. "The WIC Fruit and Vegetable Cash Voucher: Does Regional Price Variation Affect Buying Power?," Economic Information Bulletin 291947, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uersib:291947
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.291947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/291947/files/7452_eib75.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.291947?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christensen, Garret & Bronchetti, Erin Todd, 2020. "Local food prices and the purchasing power of SNAP benefits," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Volpe, Richard & Okrent, Abigail, 2012. "Assessing the Healthfulness of Consumers' Grocery Purchases," Economic Information Bulletin 262129, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Oliveira, Victor & Frazao, Elizabeth, 2015. "The WIC Program: Background, Trends, and Economic Issues, 2015 Edition," Economic Information Bulletin 197543, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Catherine E. Martinez & Lorrene D. Ritchie & Danielle L. Lee & Marisa M. Tsai & Christopher E. Anderson & Shannon E. Whaley, 2022. "California WIC Participants Report Favorable Impacts of the COVID-Related Increase to the WIC Cash Value Benefit," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-15, August.
    5. Sanjay Basu, 2014. "Improving Public Health Safety Nets After an Economic Recession," Center for Policy Research Policy Briefs 50, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    6. McLaughlin, Patrick W. & Gleason, Stacy & Wilkin, Margaret, 2018. "Price Variability Across Food Product and Vendor Type in Food Benefit Redemptions Under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)," Economic Research Report 276225, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uersib:291947. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ersgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.