ram for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. Numerous studies have found that each of these food assistance programs makes children healthier, which means that cutting these programs will make the future workforce less healthy and productive.
For example, a recent study showed that WIC—a program targeted at pregnant women and children younger than age five—increases birth weights and directly affects other positive health outcomes. This supports the findings of another study showing that access to WIC reduces the probability that a child has a low birth weight. A study on the SBP found that the program allows children to eat healthier foods, which lowers their share of calories from fat while raising their fiber intake. At the same time, access to SBP results in children who are less likely to suffer from deficiencies in vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate and are more likely to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendations for potassium and iron intake.
Research on SNAP by Hilary W. Hoynes, Douglas Almond, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach has documented several positive health and economic outcomes of the program. The three researchers analyzed differences at the county level that are linked to the establishment of the Food Stamp Program, which created a natural experiment when it began operating in various counties between 1961 and 1975. A 2011 paper by these aforementioned researchers concluded that access to food stamps reduced the incidence of low birth weights, especially for African Americans. Another paper published by these researchers in 2015 found that a child’s access to food stamps while in utero and during early childhood was associated with positive health effects that lasted for decades. Specifically, food stamps reduced the future incidence of metabolic syndrome—a collection of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart attacks.
Hoynes, Almond, and Schanzenbach also linked food stamp access during childhood to higher economic self-sufficiency for women in adulthood, which should not be surprising due to the research linking childhood health to future economic success. This study found that increased access to food stamps for young girls—and for their mothers during pregnancy—led to an increase in economic self-sufficiency when those women reached adulthood, as measured by higher incomes, more education, and lower welfare participation.
Progressives and conservatives often disagree about how to grow the economy. Some conservatives claim that massive spending cuts will grow the economy, but this severe and unnecessary austerity will undermine the current recovery and damage America’s economy over the long term. Nor is the country facing a fiscal crisis that requires such extreme cuts. Conservatives may claim that tax cuts are the key to growth, but this trickle-down approach has been repeatedly debunked by the failure of earlier tax cuts. And claims that deregulation will lead to growth focus only on costs and ignore the benefits of the many regulations that the House budget is attacking—benefits such as major improvements in childhood health from environmental rules.
The economic case for the deep cuts included in the House budget disintegrates in light of the long-term impact of making children less healthy. A truly pro-growth budget would boost investment in children to increase the potential for broadly shared economic growth and prosperity over the long term.
Harry Stein is the Director of Fiscal Policy at the Center for American Progress. Brendan V. Duke is the Associate Director for Economic Policy at the Center.