Total participation in USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) continued to increase in FY 2023

USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has provided supplemental food packages, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, and health care referrals at no cost to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants younger than 1 year old, and children 1 to 5 years old who are at nutritional risk since 1974. More than half of WIC participants are children (55.0 percent), followed by women (22.6 percent), and infants (22.4 percent). Total participation in WIC increased for the first time in more than a decade in fiscal year (FY) 2022, and this increase continued in FY 2023. Participation averaged 6.57 million people a month in FY 2023, a 5-percent increase from 6.26 million in FY 2022. This was the second increase in overall participation since the record high of 9.18 million people in FY 2010 and resulted from increased numbers of participants in all three groups (women, infants, and children). FY 2023 was the first year since 2009 that the number of infants participating in WIC increased. This chart appears on the WIC Program topic page and in the USDA, Economic Research Service’s Food and Nutrition Assistance Landscape: Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report, released June 12, 2024, and was discussed in a recorded webinar.

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