low birth weight and fetal mortality, reduce anemia, and enhance the nutritional quality of the diet of participants.ö (FRAC, 2001).
In order to understand the positive impact the program has on its participants and community welfare and economics, it is essential to understand the premise of WIC. The WIC program premise states that low income predisposes women, infants and children under the age of 5 to poor nutrition status and even poorer long-range health outcomes. The program utilizes both an income standard based on the federal poverty level and a nutrition risk criteria to determine a participantÆs eligibility. The program then seeks out scarce program resources to target to individuals with limited income resources at the highest risk of poor outcomes.
Conflict exists in the social welfare programs over exactly how to define and measure poverty. In order to reflect inadequate economic resources for the procurement and consumption of basic goods and services, poverty is defined as economic deprivation. This model is based on the assumption that there is a basic minimum level below which families cannot satisfy their basic needs. This model is often
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