2019 Annual Report of the SSI Program

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C. Federal Payments Under SSI
To estimate future amounts of Federal expenditures under SSI, the projected Federal benefit rates (table IV.A2) are first modified to reflect actual payment levels, taking into account historical and projected levels of adjustments for other actual or deemed income, marital status, and living arrangements. These actual payment levels are combined with the projected numbers of persons receiving Federal SSI payments to generate estimates of the total amounts of Federal SSI payments. Table IV.C1 shows historical amounts of such payments by calendar year. These payment amounts are presented on a payment-date basis, which is consistent with the concepts used to define SSI obligations for the Federal Budget. As a result, for months after January 1978, when SSI payments are due on the first of the month and the first of the month falls on a weekend or Federal holiday, these payments are made in the previous month.1
 
Table IV.C1.—SSI Federal Payments in Current Dollars,a Calendar Years 1975-2019
2008 b
2019 c

a
Total historical payments prior to 1978 agree with those presented in the Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin. Total historical payments for 1980-83 are estimated.
b
Payments for 2008 include $1.4 billion for SSI checks mailed in late December 2008, but reported by the Department of the Treasury in January 2009.
c
Partially estimated.

Notes:
1.Totals do not necessarily equal the sums of rounded components. The historical split among age groups is estimated on a calendar year of age basis.
2. A complete table of historical and projected values is available at www.ssa.gov/OACT/ssir/SSI19.
Based on this payment-date concept, payments in table IV.C1 differ from similar amounts in other SSA publications, such as the Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin, in two main ways. First, tabulations of payments in the Annual Statistical Supplement group payments by the month the payment is due, while table IV.C1 groups payments by the month in which the payments are made. In particular, since January 1 of each year is a Federal holiday, SSI payments due on January 1 of years 1979 and later are actually paid in December of the previous year. For example, the calendar year 2018 payment amounts shown in table IV.C1 reflect payments made in January-December 2018, and include the payments due on January 1, 2019 (which were actually paid in December 2018), but not the payments due on January 1, 2018 (which were actually paid in December 2017). Second, beginning in 1991, SSI obligations as accounted for in the Federal Budget are not reduced for certain recovered overpayments which are remitted directly to the Department of the Treasury. Tabulations in the Annual Statistical Supplement continue to report payment amounts that are reduced by such overpayment recoveries.
1984 a
2019 b

a
Payment due on October 1 of fiscal year paid in previous fiscal year.
b
Partially estimated.
Notes:
1.Totals do not necessarily equal the sums of the rounded components. The historical split among age groups is estimated on a calendar year of age basis.
2. A complete table of historical and projected values is available at www.ssa.gov/OACT/ssir/SSI19. Fiscal years prior to 1978 are omitted because SSI payment amounts are not readily available on a fiscal year basis for these years.
Table IV.C2 presents corresponding amounts of historical SSI outlays on a fiscal year basis2. As with the calendar year figures, these fiscal year amounts are shown on a payment-date basis. Consequently, fiscal year totals may contain 11, 12, or 13 months of payments.3
Changes in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI)4 directly affect SSI expenditures, since the Federal benefit rate is generally indexed to the CPI through annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs)5. Because of this indexing, price inflation contributes to increases in the total dollar amounts of Federal SSI expenditures over time. Table IV.C3 presents “constant 2019 dollar” values of total Federal SSI payments (values adjusted to remove from total expenditure growth the increases in the CPI) by calendar year, for both the historical period and the full 25-year projection period. This same information is presented as a graph in figure IV.C1. The projections of the CPI are based on the intermediate economic assumptions of the 2019 OASDI Trustees Report. By adjusting the historical and projected total amounts of SSI expenditures to remove the change in the CPI, the resulting projected amounts reflect all other reasons for change, including changes in (1) the number of recipients, (2) the composition of the recipient population by categorical eligibility, age, and sex, (3) the average SSI payment as a percentage of the Federal benefit rate due to distributional changes in marital status, living arrangements, and sources and amounts of countable income, and (4) changes in the Federal benefit rate itself other than the changes from indexing to the CPI. Section D presents an additional perspective on Federal expenditures by examining the share of the total output of the U.S. economy (GDP) needed to support the SSI program.
The future growth in the total Federal “CPI-adjusted dollar” estimates is primarily attributable to the underlying growth in the SSI recipient population (table IV.B6). A notable aspect of this time series of CPI-adjusted dollar estimates is the rather sharp level increase from 2008 to 2009. This level shift is the result of the combination of the spike in the CPI for the third quarter of calendar year 2008, which caused the large 5.8 percent benefit rate increase for 2009, and the subsequent drop in the CPI for 2009.
 
 
Adjusted a CPI
2008b

a
The “adjusted CPI” is the series of actual and projected CPI values indexed to 2019 (i.e., adjusted so that the value shown for 2019 is 100.00). Projections of the adjusted CPI are based on the intermediate economic assumptions of the 2019 OASDI Trustees Report.
b
Payments for 2008 include $1.4 billion in current dollars for SSI checks mailed in late December 2008, but reported by the Department of the Treasury in January 2009.

Notes:
1. Totals do not necessarily equal the sums of rounded components. The historical split among age groups is estimated on a calendar year of age basis.
2. A complete table of historical and projected values is available at www.ssa.gov/OACT/ssir/SSI19.
Table IV.C4 presents historical SSI State supplementation payments that SSA administers for two broad recipient categories. These amounts are consistent with tabulations in the Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin. Detailed projections of such payments are not currently prepared.
 
Notes:
1. Totals do not necessarily equal the sums of rounded components.
2. A complete table of historical and projected values is available at www.ssa.gov/OACT/ssir/SSI19.
 

1
Public Law 95‑216, the Social Security Amendments of 1977, enacted December 20, 1977, requires that SSI payments, which are normally due on the first of the month, be delivered early when the normal delivery date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Federal holiday.

2
Fiscal years 1977 and later cover the 12-month period ending September 30. For example, fiscal year 2018 payments include payments made from October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018.

3
Public Law 95-216, the Social Security Amendments of 1977, enacted December 20, 1977, requires that SSI payments, which are normally due on the first of the month, be delivered early when the normal delivery date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Federal holiday. As such, fiscal year 1978 contained 13 months of payments. Generally, for fiscal years 1979 and later, if October 1 of:
a) the current, but not the succeeding, fiscal year falls on a weekend, there are 11 months of payments;
b) both the current and succeeding fiscal years falls on a weekday, there are 12 months of payments (i.e., all payments are made in the fiscal years in which they are due);
c) both the current and succeeding fiscal years falls on a weekend, there are 12 months of payments (i.e., both payments are made in the preceding fiscal year, respectively); and
d) the succeeding, but not current, fiscal year falls on a weekend, there are 13 months of payments.

4
Historical values of the CPI are developed and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

5
The CPI is also used to index several other automatically-adjusted amounts relevant to the SSI program.


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