Assistance program
WIC Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children
$54.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Food and Nutrition Service, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants;Project Grants (Discretionary)
- CFDA number
- 10.557
- What it does
- To provide income-eligible pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, infants, and children up to age five who are determined to be at nutritional risk with supplemental nutritious foods, nutrition education, and referrals to health and social services at no cost. WIC also promotes and supports breastfeeding as the feeding method of choice for infants, provides substance abuse education and promotes immunization and other aspects of healthy living. For Formula Grants, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) makes funds available to participating State health agencies and Indian Tribal Organizations (ITOs) that, in turn, distribute the funds to participating local agencies. State and local agencies use WIC funds to pay the costs of specified supplemental foods provided to WIC participants, and to pay for specified nutrition services and administration (NSA) costs, including the cost of nutrition assessments, blood tests for anemia, nutrition education, breastfeeding promotion and support, and health care referrals. For Project Grants, FNS makes funding available to carry out WIC outreach, innovation, and program modernization efforts to increase participation and redemption of benefits. Projects may focus on reducing disparities in program delivery, improving WIC service delivery, improving the WIC shopping experience, and increasing awareness of the Program’s benefits and services.
- Who benefits
- Pregnant women, breastfeeding women up to one year postpartum, and non-breastfeeding women up to six months postpartum, infants, and children up to 5 years of age are eligible if: (1) they are individually determined by a competent professional to be in need of the special supplemental foods supplied by the Program because of nutritional risk; and (2) meet an income standard, or receive or have certain family members that receive benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. They must also reside in the State in which benefits are received. Program improvements resulting from WIC Innovation Grants benefit all WIC and WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program participants, some WIC vendors, and some WIC farmers and farmers’ markets.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments