Effective January 1957, the OASI Trust Fund pays monthly benefits to disabled children aged 18 and over of retired and deceased workers if the disability began before age 18. The age by which disability must have begun was later changed to age 22. Effective February 1968, the OASI Trust Fund pays reduced monthly benefits to disabled widows and widowers at ages 50 and over. Effective January 1991, the requirements for the disability of the widow or widower were made less restrictive.
As of December 31, 2014, about 1,079,000 individuals were receiving monthly benefits from the OASI Trust Fund because of their disabilities or the disabilities of children. This total includes approximately 25,000 mothers and fathers (wives or husbands under normal retirement age of retired-worker beneficiaries and widows or widowers of deceased insured workers) who met all other qualifying requirements and were receiving unreduced benefits solely because they had disabled-child beneficiaries (or disabled children aged 16 or 17) in their care. In calendar year 2014, the OASI Trust Fund paid a total of $10,326 million to the people described above. Table
VI.H1 shows OASI scheduled benefits for disability for selected calendar years during 1960-2014 and estimates for 2015-24 based on the intermediate set of
assumptions.