Indicators of Welfare Dependence: Annual Report to Congress, 2001 . Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program is a means tested, federally administered income assistance program authorized by title XVI of the Social Security Act.  Established in 1972 (Public Law 92-603) and begun in 1974, SSI provides monthly cash payments in accordance with uniform, nationwide eligibility requirements to needy aged, blind and disabled persons.  To qualify for SSI payments, a person must satisfy the program criteria for age, blindness or disability.  Children may qualify for SSI if they are under age 18, unmarried, and meet the applicable SSI disability or blindness, income and resource requirements.  Individuals and couples are eligible for SSI if their countable incomes fall below the Federal maximum monthly SSI benefit levels, which were $532 for an individual and $789 for a couple in fiscal year 2000.  SSI eligibility is restricted to qualified persons who have countable resources/assets of not more than $2,000, or $3,000 for a couple.

SSI law requires that SSI applicants file for all other money benefits for which they may be entitled.  Since its inception, SSI has been viewed as the “program of last resort”-- after evaluating all other income, SSI pays what is necessary to bring an individual to the statutorily prescribed income “floor.”  (The Social Security Administration, which administers the SSI program, works with recipients and helps them get any other benefits for which they are eligible.)  As of December 1999, 36 percent of all SSI recipients also received Social Security benefits; Social Security benefits are the single highest source of income for SSI recipients.

No individual could receive both SSI payments and AFDC benefits; if eligible for both, the individual was required to choose which benefit to receive.  Generally, the AFDC agency encouraged individuals to file for SSI and, once the SSI payments had started, the individual was removed from the AFDC filing unit.  The PRWORA does not specifically prohibit an individual’s receipt of both TANF benefits and SSI; states have complete authority to set TANF eligibility standards and benefit levels.

Except in California, which converted food stamp benefits to cash that is included in the State supplementary payment, SSI recipients may be eligible to receive food stamps.  If all household members receive SSI, they do not need to meet the Food Stamp Program financial eligibility standards to participate in the program because they are categorically eligible.  If SSI beneficiaries live in households where other household members do not receive SSI benefits, the household must meet the net income eligibility standard of the Food Stamp Program to be eligible for food stamp benefits.

Recent Legislative Changes

Several legislative changes made in the 104th Congress are likely to affect Supplemental Security Income (SSI) participation and expenditures.  Public Law 104-121, the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996, prohibits SSI eligibility to individuals whose drug addiction and/or alcoholism (DAA) is a contributing factor material to the finding of disability.  This provision applied to individuals who filed for benefits on or after the date of enactment (March 29, 1996) and to individuals whose claims were finally adjudicated on or after the date of enactment.  It applied to current beneficiaries on January 1, 1997.

The PRWORA made several changes designed to maintain the SSI program’s goal of providing benefits for severely disabled children while preventing children without serious impairments from receiving benefits.  First, the act replaced the former law “comparable severity” test with a new definition of childhood disability based on a medically determinable physical or mental impairment.  Second, it discontinued use of the Individualized Functional Assessment (IFA) which authorized subjective judgment to determine children’s eligibility for SSI.  Third, it eliminated references to “maladaptive behavior” in the Listings of Impairments (among medical criteria for evaluation of mental and emotional disorders in the domain of personal/behavioral function).  The latter two provisions were effective for all new and pending applications upon enactment (August 22, 1996).  Current beneficiaries receiving benefits due to an IFA or maladaptive behavior listing received notice no later than January 1, 1997, that their benefits might end when their case is redetermined.  All currently receiving benefits are subject to redetermination using the new eligibility criteria by February 28, 1998 (per P.L. 105-33, enacted August 5, 1997).

Title IV of PRWORA also made significant changes in the eligibility of noncitizens for SSI benefits.  Essentially, qualified aliens (including legal immigrants) are barred from SSI.  Some of the restrictions were subsequently moderated, most notably by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-33), which grandfathered immigrants who were receiving SSI at the time of enactment of the PRWORA.

Several provisions aimed at reducing SSI fraud and improving recovery of overpayments were enacted in 1999, as part of the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 (P. L. 106-169).  Other legislation enacted in 1999 provides additional work incentives for disabled beneficiaries of SSI.

SSI Program Data

The following set of tables and figures provide SSI program data:

• Tables SSI-1 through SSI-4 present national caseload and expenditure trend data on the SSI program;
• Table SSI-5 presents some demographic characteristics of the SSI caseload; and 
• Tables SSI 6-8 present some state-by-state trend data on the SSI program through fiscal year 1999.

From 1990 to 1995, the program increased from 4.8 million beneficiaries to 6.5 million beneficiaries, an average growth rate of over 6 percent per year.  Since 1995, the number of beneficiaries has stabilized, fluctuating between 6.5 and 6.6 million persons.  In December 1999, there were nearly 6.6 million beneficiaries.  Table SSI 1 presents information on the number of persons receiving SSI payments in December of each year from 1974 through 1999.  In addition to data on the total number of SSI recipients, Table SSI 1 also shows recipients by eligibility category (aged, blind and disabled) and by type of recipient (child, adult age 18-64, and adult age 65 or older).  See also Table IND 9a and Table IND 9b in Chapter II for further data on trends in recipiency and participation rates.

The composition of the SSI caseload has been shifting over time, as shown in Table A-20.  The number of beneficiaries eligible because of age has been declining steadily, from a high of 2.3 million persons in December 1975 to 1.3 million persons in December 1998.  At the same time there has been a strong growth in disabled beneficiaries, from 1.6 million in December 1974 to 5.2 million in December 1999.  Moreover, the number of disabled children has increased dramatically, particularly in the 1990s, when the number of disabled children receiving SSI increased from 340,000 in December 1990 to 955,000 in December 1996.  The number of disabled children has fallen in the past three years, declining to 847,000 in December 1999.^[1]

Several factors have contributed to the growth of the Supplemental Security Income program. Expansions in disability eligibility (particularly for mentally impaired adults and for children), increased outreach, overall growth in immigration, and transfers from state programs were among the key factors identified in a 1995 study by the General Accounting Office (GAO).  GAO concluded that three groups – adults with mental impairments, children, and non-citizens – accounted for nearly 90 percent of the SSI program’s growth in the early 1990s.  The growth in disabled children beneficiaries is generally believed to be due to outreach activities, the Supreme Court decision in the Zebley case^[2], expansion of the medical impairment category, and reduction in reviews of continuing eligibility.

Figure SSI 1.  SSI Recipients by Age, 1974 – 1999

Source:  Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, (Data available online at http://www.ssa.gov/statistics/ores_home.html).

Table SSI 1. Number of Persons Receiving Federally Administered SSI Payments
1974 – 1999 [In thousands]

¹  Includes students 18-21 in 1974 only.

Source:  Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000, (Data available online at http://www.ssa.gov/statistics).

Table SSI 2. SSI Recipiency Rates, 1974 – 1999 [In percent]

¹ Population numbers used for the denominators are Census resident population estimates adjusted to the December date by averaging the July 1 population of the current year with the July 1 population of the following year; see Current Population Reports, Series P25-1106 and Resident Population Estimates of the United States by Age and Sex, April 1, 1990 to July 1, 2000, Internet release date January 2, 2001 (Available online at http://www.census.gov).
² For the number of persons (65 years of age and older living in poverty) used as the denominator, see Current Population Reports, Series P60-210. 
³ The pretransfer poverty population used as the denominator is the number of all elderly persons living in elderly-only units whose income (cash income plus social insurance plus Social Security but before taxes and means-tested transfers) falls below the appropriate poverty threshold. See Appendix J, Table 20, 1992 Green Book; data for subsequent years are unpublished Congressional Budget Office tabulations.
Notes: Numerators for these ratios are from Table A-20.  Rates computed by DHHS. 

Source: 1994 Green Book and U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Poverty in the United States: 1999," Current Population Reports, Series P60-210, and earlier years, (Available online at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html).

Table SSI 3. Total, Federal, and State SSI Benefits and Administration, 1974 – 1999¹ [In millions of dollars]

¹ Payments and adjustments during the respective year but not necessarily accrued for that year.
² Data adjusted for inflation by ASPE using the CPI-U-X1.

Source: Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000, (Data available online at http://www.ssa.gov/statistics).

Table SSI 4. Average Monthly SSI Benefit Payments, 1974 – 1999

 ¹ Total is a weighted average of the Federal plus State average benefit, the Federal-only average benefit, and State-only average benefit.
Note: The numerators for these averages are given in Table SSI 3 and the denominators are given in Table SSI 5.  Averages were computed by DHHS.  Data adjusted for inflation using the monthly values of the CPI-U-X1 index.
Source: Number of persons receiving payments obtained from Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000.

Table SSI 5. Number of Persons Receiving SSI Payments by Type of Payment, 1974 – 1999 (in thousands)

Source:  Number of persons receiving payments obtained from Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000.

Table SSI 6. Characteristics of SSI Recipients, by Age, Sex, Earnings/Income, and Citizenship: Selected Years, 1980-1999

Note: Data are for December of the year.

¹ For 1980-1992 male-female classification reflects all blind and disabled, both children and adults; thereafter, it is based on adults only.
² In this table, students 18-21 are classified as children prior to 1998.

Source: Social Security Administration, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000 and prior years.

Table SSI 7. Total SSI Payments, Federal SSI Payments And State Supplementary Payments Calendar Year 1999 (In thousands)

¹ Represents recovered State payments not yet credited to the states.

Source: Number of persons receiving payments obtained from Social Security Administration, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Bulletin · Annual Statistical Supplement · 2000.

Table SSI 8. SSI Recipiency Rates by State And Program Type for 1979 and 1999 [In percent]

Note: Recipiency rates for 1999 are the ratios of the number of SSI recipients (in the respective age groups) as of the month of December to the population in the respective age group as of the month of July; calculations by DHHS.  The 1979 rates are based on the average number of recipients during the year.
Source: Social Security Administration and U.S. Bureau of the Census, (Resident population by state available online at http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/state/).

Table SSI 9. SSI Recipiency Rates by State, Selected Fiscal Years 1975 – 1999 [In percent]

¹ The number of SSI recipients used to calculate the total recipiency rate includes a certain number of recipients whose State is unknown. For 1975, 1985, and 1992, the numbers of unknown (in thousands) were 256, 14, and 71 respectively.
² For 1975-92 the percentages are calculated as the average number of monthly SSI recipients over the total population of each State in July of that year.  For 1994-1999 the number of recipients is from the month of December; calculations by DHHS.
Source: Social Security Administration and Bureau of the Census, (Resident population by state available online at http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/state/).

Endnotes

^[1] Earlier editions of Indicators of Welfare Dependence included students 18-21 in the count of children and so reported about 50 thousand more disabled children.

^[2]  On February 20, 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual functional assessment (or a residual functional capacity assessment) applied to adults whose condition did not meet or equal a listing of medical impairments to determine eligibility should also be applied to children whose condition did not meet or equal the medical listing of impairments.  The GAO study estimated that 87,000 children were added to the SSI caseload after the individual functional assessments for children were initiated.

View full report

Download

"Indicators of Welfare Dependence Annual Report to Congress March 2001 .pdf" (pdf, 430.45Kb)

Note: Documents in PDF format require the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. If you experience problems with PDF documents, please download the latest version of the Reader®