Data providing detailed county level information for eWIC rollout in Ohio

By October 2020, states across the nation must deliver benefits for the WIC program via electronic benefits transfer, also referred to as eWIC. The state of Ohio made the transition from 2014 to 2015 and staggered implementation across counties. In this article, we present county-level data on the specific dates Ohio counties changed to eWIC. We also present detailed demographic data for the counties included in each roll-out date.


Data
State officials in the Ohio Department of Heath (ODH)adopted a staggered implementation approach to roll out eWIC technology across all 88 counties. In 2014, state officials piloted eWIC technology in 5 counties in three different phases. In 2015, the state completed the rollout to the remaining 83 counties in four separate phases (Table 1). Additional details of the rollout can be found in [1]. We also collected detailed demographic data for each county in Ohio and aggregated these data by roll out phase. We report these data in Table 2. The authors will provide copies of the newsletters and their county-level demographic data up on request.

Experimental design, materials and methods
To retrieve the eWIC implementation data for Ohio we extracted information from newsletters supplied available on the Ohio Department of Health's website. ODH publishes these newsletters for WIC recipients to keep them informed about WIC program updates and changes. These newsletters contain detailed information about eWIC introduction in counties, how recipients can obtain eWIC cards, and how they redeem benefits with eWIC.
To identify potential setbacks during implementation, ODH officials used three different pilot phases in 2014 (see Table 1) with counties of various sizes and demographic characteristics. Once ODH worked through issues identified in the pilot phases, it implemented eWIC in eight relatively smaller counties on January 26, 2015 and gradually increased the number of counties (see Table 1), and average county population (see Table 2), in implementation groups in the remaining three phases. Table 2 also provides data on income, household size, and poverty for the groups of counties in each implementation date. We retrieved these data from the Census website [2] and generated data in Table  2 by averaging data across all counties in each roll-out phase. Counties that transitioned in January 26 had the lowest household median income overall, and for households that participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This group of eight counties also had, on average, the fewest households and the largest percentage of households with welfare income. Figure 1 in [1] graphically illustrates how ODH geographically grouped counties for implementation. Counties that implemented eWIC on January 26 are all in the Appalachian region.

Value of the data
Data on eWIC implementation dates in Ohio counties listed in Table 1 shows the exact sources of variation in eWIC implementation. Researchers can use this variation in Ohio, and tap into similar variation in other states, to identify the impact of eWIC on WIC recipient shopping behavior. The staggered implementation dates also provide a good source of variation for researchers to study the potential effect EBT has on enrollment in WIC Detailed county-level data in Table 2 show similarities and differences in demographic characteristics across each eWIC rollout phase. This may help researchers identify region specific interventions for underprivileged and/or low-income households.

Specifications table
Subject area Economics More specific subject area

Economics of Nutrition Assistance Programs
Type of data Tables  How data was acquired State and federal government websites Data format Analyzed

Experimental factors
Counties in Ohio introduced eWIC to facilitate benefit redemption for WIC recipients.

Experimental features
The Ohio Department of Health staggered eWIC implementation in the counties across seven different phases from July 2014 through July 2015.

Data source location
We collected eWIC implementation dates from newsletters published by the Ohio Department of Health, which we accessed online. We collected county demographic information from publicly available files online.

Data accessibility
We include all data with this article.  Source [2].