Participation in the USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is highest at the moment a baby is born, then erodes as that baby grows. In New York, close to 69 percent of eligible infants are enrolled in the program, but the share drops sharply once those babies become toddlers. Researchers and advocates have a name for this pattern: the “toddler cliff.” Paradoxically, families step away from WIC just as toddlers wean off formula, start eating table food, and enter the years when the program’s fruit and vegetable benefit and nutrition counseling arguably matter most.
Nationally, the drop-off steepens with each year of childhood. The Food and Nutrition Service estimated that in 2023, about 82 percent of eligible infants took part in WIC, compared with 67 percent of eligible 1-year-olds and just 27 percent of eligible 4-year-olds. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has described children ages 1 to 5 as having the lowest participation rates of any WIC cohort, even though children make up more than half of all participants nationwide.
New York mirrors the national pattern. According to the New York State Department of Health, 44.8 percent of eligible young children ages 1 to 4 participated in WIC in 2022, compared with 68.6 percent of eligible infants. The state’s WIC program served about 462,000 women, infants, and children as of October 2025, reaching roughly 66 percent of the eligible population. The toddler gap, though narrowing in recent years, has proved stubborn.
The timing is what makes the cliff so concerning. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted that participation tapers off among eligible toddlers even though adequate nutrition is critical during the early years of brain development—the program is built to support healthy growth in utero, through infancy, and across the toddler years. WIC’s benefits are designed around developmental milestones, providing milk, eggs, whole grains, produce, and nutrition education during the years of fastest brain growth. Decades of research link WIC participation to healthier diets, better access to preventive care, and improved cognitive and academic outcomes, and the National WIC Association estimates that every dollar invested in WIC returns about $2.48 in medical, educational, and productivity savings. When a family leaves WIC at a child’s first birthday, they are foregoing support during the very window the program was built to cover.
The research points less to a lack of need than to friction. A 2023 systematic review of why families exit WIC identified administrative barriers, confusion about ongoing eligibility, stigma at store checkouts, dissatisfaction with historically small fruit and vegetable benefits, and personal and family challenges as recurring factors. Many parents assume WIC is “for babies” or tied mainly to formula and don’t realize that their child remains eligible until age five. Recertification adds its own hurdle. Children must be recertified periodically—generally about once a year—and, until recently, that often meant in-person visits with documentation. As children grow, the routine pediatric visits that once prompted re-enrollment also become less frequent, removing a key touchpoint.
What New York Is Doing
New York has leaned on technology to close the gap, and the most useful tool has been remote service. During the pandemic, federal waivers let families certify and recertify by phone or video; until then, fewer than 12 percent of WIC agencies offered remote appointments, a figure that has since jumped to nearly all of them. The National WIC Association has reported that the shift coincided with a roughly 12 percent increase in child participation, reversing a long decline. New York’s senior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, has repeatedly pushed to make remote certification and benefit issuance permanent before the temporary flexibilities expire on September 30, 2026. She has introduced the bipartisan MODERN WIC Act across several Congresses and, most recently, the 21st Century WIC Act in February 2026, which would allow certification and recertification by phone or video while still requiring at least one in-person visit.
The state has also worked to make enrollment more accessible itself. Through a partnership with Code for America announced in Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2023 State of the State address, New York piloted live online chat and client feedback tools to find out where families get stuck. That work helped produce “Wanda,” an online WIC assistant that screens families for eligibility, routes them to a local office for a phone or in-person appointment, and walks current participants through recertification.
“While it’s true that infants participate at a higher rate than toddlers, we are excited by recent increases in participation among children over age one,” said Misha Marvel of NY Health Solutions. From February 2020 to April 2026, the state’s child participation grew nearly 48 percent, from roughly 190,000 to 282,000 children—significantly outpacing overall participation growth. Marvel credits much of that to the remote flexibilities and shopping upgrades like the eWIC card. One telling measure: the “no-show” rate at New York WIC agencies fell from 14.1 percent at the start of fiscal year 2020 to 5.1 percent by the start of fiscal 2026. “This is all excellent news from a public health perspective,” Marvel said, “as we know WIC’s benefits to participants increase the longer families participate.”
New York has also studied why families leave. The state’s “Keep, Reconnect, Thrive” retention study convened 21 focus groups consisting of 284 WIC staff, coordinators, and vendors to determine why so many families exit after a child’s first birthday. Among the tools it produced was a picture-based food card designed to make shopping easier and reduce the checkout confusion that drives some parents away.
A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health pointed to measurable progress: “New York State’s WIC coverage rate for children aged 1 to 4 increased from 43.3 percent in 2020 to 56.7 percent in 2023, exceeding the national average (47.9 percent) by 8.8 percent in 2023.” The spokesperson added that overall WIC participation in the state has consistently stayed above the national average in recent years, according to USDA data. To keep older children enrolled, the department says it sends recertification letters, uses appointment reminders and missed-appointment calls, treats Head Start enrollment as an automatic qualifier, and maintains outreach resources aimed specifically at children over age one.
Finally, the food itself has changed. A 2024 USDA final rule—the first major revision to the WIC food packages in a decade—permanently increased the Cash Value Benefit for fruits and vegetables and added more culturally appropriate foods and flexibility. New York children now receive $26 a month in produce benefits, up from roughly $9 before 2021. And the size of that benefit appears to help determine whether families stay. One study examined whether participants would keep their WIC benefits if the produce allowance fell back to its pre-2021 level of about $9 a month. The National WIC Association points to survey data showing that produce access is the top reason participants enroll. On that basis, the association has called the more generous, flexible package critical at a time of high food costs.
These gains, however, are fragile. A House appropriations proposal released this spring would cut WIC funding by roughly $200 million and pare back the fruit and vegetable benefit, while pandemic-era remote flexibilities could lapse without congressional action—both of which would have their most serious effect on the toddler years, when retention is already weakest. Pushing in the opposite direction, a bipartisan proposal known as the Wise Investment in our Children (WIC) Act would extend eligibility to age six or the start of kindergarten, closing the gap between WIC and school meals.
The toddler cliff is, at its root, a problem of administration and awareness—families tripped up by paperwork and recertification, or simply unaware that their children remain eligible until age five—which is exactly what makes it solvable. New York has spent the past several years showing that remote access, simpler enrollment, clearer information, and a stronger produce benefit can pull the curve upward. Whether those gains hold may depend less on families than on what Washington decides to fund.
