CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

Integrating Administrative and Survey Data to Estimate WIC Eligibility and Access

July 2026

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The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'Integrating Administrative and Survey Data to Estimate WIC Eligibility and Access' are listed below in order of similarity.

• Working Paper

  🔥

  
  
  Access to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the State and Substate Levels: Meaning and Measurement
  

  July 2026

  Authors: Renuka Bhaskar, Thomas B. Foster, Michaela Dillon, Linden McBride, Mark Prell, Maria Perez-Patron, Erik Vickstrom, Brian Knop, Kegan O’Connor

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-26-44

  This study estimates eligibility and access rates for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) administrative data linked with American Community Survey (ACS) data. This study is one result of a long-term research collaboration among USDA's Economic Research Service; the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census; USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS); and participating state WIC agencies.'By analyzing WIC participation at the state and substate levels, the report provides insights into program reach and demographic differences. The findings confirm that the Census Bureau estimates meet high statistical reliability standards, providing valuable data for program officials and managers, and other stakeholders, to enhance program outreach and effectiveness. A key focus of the report is the comparison between Census Bureau and USDA, FNS estimates, which differ in methodology and measurement scope.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  The Measurement of Medicaid Coverage in the SIPP: Evidence from California, 1990-1996
  

  September 2002

  Authors: David Card, Andrew KG Hildreth, Lara D Shore-Sheppard

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-02-21

  This paper studies the accuracy of reported Medicaid coverage in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) using a unique data set formed by matching SIPP survey responses to administrative records from the State of California. Overall, we estimate that the SIPP underestimates Medicaid coverage in the California populaton by about 10 percent. Among SIPP respondents who can be matched to administrative records, we estimate that the probability someone reports Medicaid coverage in a month when they are actually covered is around 85 percent. The corresponding probability for low-income children is even higher ' at least 90 percent. These estimates suggest that the SIPP provides reasonably accurate coverage reports for those who are actually in the Medicaid system. On the other hand, our estimate of the false positive rate (the rate of reported coverage for those who are not covered in the administrative records) is relatively high: 2.5 percent for the sample as a whole, and up to 20 percent for poor children. Some of this is due to errors in the recording of Social Security numbers in the administrative system, rather than to problems in the SIPP.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  The Design of Sampling Strata for the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey
  

  February 2025

  Authors: Jonathan Eggleston, Mark Klee, Linden McBride

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-25-13

  The National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) and Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), examines the food purchasing behavior of various subgroups of the U.S. population. These subgroups include participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), as well as households who are eligible for but don't participate in these programs. Participants in these social protection programs constitute small proportions of the U.S. population; obtaining an adequate number of such participants in a survey would be challenging absent stratified sampling to target SNAP and WIC participating households. This document describes how the U.S. Census Bureau (which is planning to conduct future versions of the FoodAPS survey on behalf of USDA) created sampling strata to flag the FoodAPS targeted subpopulations using machine learning applications in linked survey and administrative data. We describe the data, modeling techniques, and how well the sampling flags target low-income households and households receiving WIC and SNAP benefits. We additionally situate these efforts in the nascent literature on the use of big data and machine learning for the improvement of survey efficiency.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and Their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation
  

  April 2011

  Authors: Bruce Meyer, Robert Goerge

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-11-14

  Benefit receipt in major household surveys is often underreported. This misreporting leads to biased estimates of the economic circumstances of disadvantaged populations, program takeup, and the distributional effects of government programs, and other program effects. We use administrative data on Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation matched to American Community Survey (ACS) and Current Population Survey (CPS) household data. We show that nearly thirty-five percent of true recipient households do not report receipt in the ACS and fifty percent do not report receipt in the CPS. Misreporting, both false negatives and false positives, varies with individual characteristics, leading to complicated biases in FSP analyses. We then directly examine the determinants of program receipt using our combined administrative and survey data. The combined data allow us to examine accurate participation using individual characteristics missing in administrative data. Our results differ from conventional estimates using only survey data, as such estimates understate participation by single parents, non-whites, low income households, and other groups. To evaluate the use of Census Bureau imputed ACS and CPS data, we also examine whether our estimates using survey data alone are closer to those using the accurate combined data when imputed survey observations are excluded. Interestingly, excluding the imputed observations leads to worse ACS estimates, but has less effect on the CPS estimates.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  The Impact of Expanding Public Health Insurance on Safety Net Program Participation: Evidence From the ACA Medicaid Expansion
  

  May 2026

  Authors: Lara D Shore-Sheppard, Lucie Schmidt, Tara Watson

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-26-32

  We examine spillover effects from the ACA Medicaid expansion to public programs providing cash and food assistance. We consider program participation in contiguous county pairs crossing state borders, where one state took up the Medicaid expansion and the other did not, allowing us to better control for local economic trends that could affect program participation. We find that the Medicaid expansion increased participation in food assistance and one of the cash programs, with impacts mainly due to participation conditional on eligibility, rather than from labor supply responses. Our results demonstrate the potential for spillovers across safety net programs.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income
  

  March 2024

  Authors: Sarah Miller, Laura Wherry, Gloria G. Aldana, Amelia A. Hawkins, Christopher A. Hollrah, Mitchell D. Wong

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-24-10

  This paper examines whether a generous cash intervention early in life can "undo" some of the long-term disadvantage associated with poor health at birth. We use new linkages between several large-scale administrative datasets to examine the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of providing low-income families with low birthweight infants support through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This program uses a birthweight cutoff at 1200 grams to determine eligibility. We find that families of infants born just below this cutoff experience a large increase in cash benefits totaling about 27%of family income in the first three years of the infant's life. These cash benefits persist at lower amounts through age 10. Eligible infants also experience a small but statistically significant increase in Medicaid enrollment during childhood. We examine whether this support affects health care use and mortality in infancy, educational performance in high school, post-secondary school attendance and college degree attainment, and earnings, public assistance use, and mortality in young adulthood for all infants born in California to low-income families whose birthweight puts them near the cutoff. We also examine whether these payments had spillover effects onto the older siblings of these infants who may have also benefited from the increase in family resources. Despite the comprehensive nature of this early life intervention, we detect no improvements in any of the study outcomes, nor do we find improvements among the older siblings of these infants. These null effects persist across several subgroups and alternative model specifications, and, for some outcomes, our estimates are precise enough to rule out published estimates of the effect of early life cash transfers in other settings.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Within and Across County Variation in SNAP Misreporting: Evidence from Linked ACS and Administrative Records
  

  July 2014

  Authors: Benjamin Cerf Harris

  Working Paper Number:

  carra-2014-05

  This paper examines sub-state spatial and temporal variation in misreporting of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) using several years of the American Community Survey linked to SNAP administrative records from New York (2008-2010) and Texas (2006-2009). I calculate county false-negative (FN) and false-positive (FP) rates for each year of observation and find that, within a given state and year, there is substantial heterogeneity in FN rates across counties. In addition, I find evidence that FN rates (but not FP rates) persist over time within counties. This persistence in FN rates is strongest among more populous counties, suggesting that when noise from sampling variation is not an issue, some counties have consistently high FN rates while others have consistently low FN rates. This finding is important for understanding how misreporting might bias estimates of sub-state SNAP participation rates, changes in those participation rates, and effects of program participation. This presentation was given at the CARRA Seminar, June 27, 2013
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Covering Undocumented Immigrants: The Effects of a Large-Scale Prenatal Care Intervention
  

  August 2022

  Authors: Sarah Miller, Laura Wherry

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-22-28

  Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public insurance coverage for prenatal care in most states, despite their children representing a large fraction of births and having U.S. citizenship. In this paper, we examine a policy that expanded Medicaid pregnancy coverage to undocumented immigrants. Using a novel dataset that links California birth records to Census surveys, we identify siblings born to immigrant mothers before and after the policy. Implementing a mothers' fixed effects design, we find that the policy increased coverage for and use of prenatal care among pregnant immigrant women, and increased average gestation length and birth weight among their children.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Capturing More Than Poverty: School Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Data and Household Income
  

  December 2017

  Authors: Quentin Brummet, Sonya R. Porter, Thurston Domina, Nikolas Pharris-Ciurej, Andrew Penner, Emily Penner, Tanya Sanabria

  Working Paper Number:

  carra-2017-09

  Educational researchers often use National School Lunch Program (NSLP) data as a proxy for student poverty. Under NSLP policy, students whose household income is less than 130 percent of the poverty line qualify for free lunch and students whose household income is between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty line qualify for reduced-price lunch. Linking school administrative records for all 8th graders in a California public school district to household-level IRS income tax data, we examine how well NSLP data capture student disadvantage. We find both that there is substantial disadvantage in household income not captured by NSLP category data, and that NSLP categories capture disadvantage on test scores above and beyond household income.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Consequences of Eviction for Parenting and Non-parenting College Students
  

  June 2025

  Authors: Sonya R. Porter, Danielle H. Sandler, Nick Graetz, Adam Chapnik

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-25-35

  Amidst rising and increasingly unaffordable rents, 7.6 million people are threatened with eviction each year across the United States'and eviction rates are twice as high for renters with children. One important and neglected population who may experience unique levels of housing insecurity is college students, especially given that one in five college students are parents. In this study, we link 11.9 million student records to eviction filings from housing courts, demographic characteristics reported in decennial census and survey data, incomes reported on tax returns by students and their parents, and dates of birth and death from the Social Security Administration. Parenting students are more likely than non-parenting students to identify as female (62.81% vs. 55.94%) and Black (19.66% vs. 14.30%), be over 30 years old (42.73% vs. 20.25%), and have parents with lower household incomes ($100,000 vs. $140,000). Parenting students threatened with eviction (i.e., had an eviction filed against them) are much more likely than non-threatened parenting students to identify as female (81.18% vs. 62.81%) and Black (56.84% vs. 19.66%). In models adjusted for individual and institutional characteristics, we find that being threatened with an eviction was significantly associated with reduced likelihood of degree completion, reduced post-enrollment income, reduced likelihood of being married post-enrollment, and increased post-enrollment mortality. Among parenting students, 38.38% (95% confidence interval (CI): 32.50-44.26%) of non-threatened students completed a bachelor's degree compared to just 15.36% (CI: 11.61-19.11%) of students threatened with eviction. Our findings highlight the long-term economic and health impacts of housing insecurity during college, especially for parenting students. Housing stability for parenting students may have substantial multigenerational benefits for economic mobility and population health.
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