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The problem
Intervention: State policy changes allowing remote issuance of WIC benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic
Who it was tested with: Women (pregnant and postpartum), infants (under age 1), and children (ages 1-4) eligible for WIC in low-income households across US states.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"This study used national administrative data from the period January 2017-March 2021 and a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach to assess the associations between five state-level policy changes and WIC participation rates." The quasi-experimental design with a comparison group of states that did not implement remote benefit issuance provides stronger causal inference than pre-post designs alone.
Multiple policy changes were implemented simultaneously during the pandemic, making it difficult to isolate the independent effects of policies other than remote benefit issuance. The study design cannot control for all confounding factors during an unprecedented period.
Across countries and designs
1 study · 1 country
