WIC provides nutritious foods (including infant formula), nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and referrals to health care and social services for millions of low-income families, improving lifetime health for women, their infants, and young children. For decades, WIC has supported breastfeeding - including by providing additional WIC foods that breastfeeding parents and breastfed infants need - while also allowing low-income families to get formula they might not otherwise be able to afford. It also raises key questions that policymakers will need to address as they develop policies to prevent an infant formula supply disruption like this from happening again.
This paper aims to correct some misconceptions about WIC and the current shortage by explaining how WIC obtains infant formula and how policymakers have responded to the shortage thus far.
infants and accounts for more than half of formula consumption, plays in the infant formula market. Infant formula shortages triggered by a safety recall have brought attention to the role that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which serves more than 40 percent of U.S.
