2021 Annual Report of the SSI Program

II. Highlights

The SSI program is a nationwide Federal assistance program administered by SSA that guarantees a minimum level of income for aged, blind, or disabled individuals. This section presents highlights of recent SSI program experience, a summary of important legislative changes to the program in the last year, a discussion of current issues facing the SSI program, and a summary of the key results from the 25-year projections.

A. Recent Program Experience

SSI program experience during the past year included the following:

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During calendar year 2020, 1.3 million individuals applied for SSI benefits based on blindness or disability, a decrease of 14 percent as compared to the 1.5 million who applied in 2019. Additionally, 96 thousand individuals applied for SSI benefits based on age, a decrease of 24 percent as compared to the 127 thousand who applied in 2019. In 2020, 597 thousand applicants became new recipients of SSI benefits, a decrease of 17 percent as compared to the 724 thousand who became new recipients in 2019.

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Each month on average during calendar year 2020, 7.9 million individuals received Federal SSI benefits. This group was composed of 1.1 million aged recipients and 6.8 million blind or disabled recipients, of which 66 thousand were blind. Of these 6.8 million blind or disabled recipients, 1.1 million were under age 18, and 1.1 million were aged 65 or older. During calendar year 2020, 8.6 million aged, blind, or disabled individuals received Federal SSI benefits for at least 1 month.

•	Federal expenditures for payments under the SSI program in calendar year 2020 totaled $56.4 billion, an increase from $56.2 billion in 2019.

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Each month on average during calendar year 2020, 1.4 million individuals received federally administered State supplementation payments. This group was composed of 403 thousand aged recipients and 1.0 million blind or disabled recipients, of which 19 thousand were blind. Of these 1.0 million blind or disabled recipients, 123 thousand were under age 18, and 265 thousand were aged 65 or older. During calendar year 2020, 1.6 million aged, blind, or disabled individuals received State supplementation payments for at least 1 month.

•	State expenditures for federally administered State supplements, excluding fees for Federal administration, totaled $2.5 billion in calendar year 2020, a decrease from $2.6 billion in 2019.

•	The cost SSA incurred to administer the SSI program in FY 2020 was $4.4 billion, which was roughly 7 percent of total federally administered SSI expenditures.1

•	In January 2021, 7.9 million individuals received federally administered monthly SSI benefits averaging $586. Of these, 7.8 million received monthly Federal SSI payments averaging $570, and 1.4 million received monthly State supplementation payments averaging $145.

B. SSI Legislation Since The 2020 Annual Report

Since we submitted the 2020 Annual Report of the Supplemental Security Income Program to the President and Congress on May 29, 2020, there have been no legislative changes made to the SSI program.

C. Current Issues Facing The SSI Program

For almost 50 years, the SSI program has provided a safety net for aged, blind, and disabled Americans who have nowhere else to turn. The program plays a crucial role in the lives of over eight million Americans and is funded from general tax revenues. Accordingly, we take great care to administer the program as accurately and efficiently as possible and remain committed to effectively overseeing the program, protecting taxpayer dollars, and maintaining the public’s trust by paying the right person the right benefit at the right time.

Outreach to People Facing Barriers During the Pandemic

The pandemic has imposed hardships on our country’s most vulnerable citizens, many of whom are elderly, have low incomes, have limited English proficiency, face homelessness, or experience mental illness. SSI benefits are a crucial lifeline that not only helps vulnerable people meet their basic needs of food and shelter, but in many places SSI eligibility also serves as a gateway that provides automatic eligibility for other programs, such as Medicaid. Over the course of the pandemic, SSI applications decreased from their pre-pandemic levels. In response, we have prioritized our outreach to vulnerable populations to ensure the public is aware of and can access SSI and our other benefit programs.

We have worked closely on this effort with a variety of interested parties, including representatives of the non-profit community; health care organizations; private industry; the advocate community; and Federal, State, and local governments. Through our partnerships, these groups help share information about our programs, assist in taking SSI claims, and actively refer individuals potentially eligible for SSI to our field offices.

We have also enhanced our communications and online content to further support these efforts. For example, we conducted a national advertising campaign on TV, radio, and social media to bolster our outreach efforts, with special emphasis on children with disabilities. We also added online tools and informational pages to our website including:

•	A dedicated webpage with resources for people helping others;

•	Outreach materials for partner groups; and

•	Information for faith-based and community groups including a new toolkit, which we created in collaboration with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

We are also conducting mailed outreach to certain Social Security beneficiaries who may be eligible for SSI. Between December 2020 and March 2021, we released approximately 200,000 notices to this group encouraging them to contact us to apply for SSI. We plan to expand this initiative and send SSI outreach letters to another 1.2 million Social Security beneficiaries starting in the middle of calendar year 2021.

 

D. Key Results From The 25-Year Projections

The major findings in the 25-year projections prepared for this report are:

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Following small declines in the SSI recipient population in the late 1990s due to the combined impact of Public Law 104-121 (the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996) and Public Law 104-193 (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), modest growth in the SSI rolls resumed in 2000. The economic recession that began in late 2007 led to faster growth in the SSI recipient population through 2013, but in recent years the SSI recipient population has slightly declined as the number of applicants for SSI payments declined through 2020. The number of applications decreased sharply in 2020, due to a number of pandemic-related effects. In 2021, the number of applications is projected to remain low as the pandemic continues. In 2022 and 2023, the number of applications is projected to increase sharply as the pandemic abates. In 2024 and 2025, the number of applications is projected to return to levels more consistent with longer-term expected experience, and then remain at roughly this level thereafter. By 2045, we project that the Federal SSI recipient population will reach 8.5 million. As a percentage of the total Social Security area population, we project the number of Federal SSI recipients to decrease very gradually from 2.34 in 2020 to 2.21 percent of the population by 2045. This occurs for several reasons, including that the percent of the population potentially eligible for SSI based on their citizenship and residency status is projected to decline slightly in the future.

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We project that Federal expenditures for SSI payments in calendar year 2021 will decrease slightly by $0.5 billion to $55.8 billion, a decrease of 0.9 percent from 2020 levels. In dollars adjusted by the Consumer Price Index to 2021 levels, we pro­ject that SSI program outlays will increase to $62.8 billion in 2045, a real increase of 0.3 percent per year.

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Federal SSI expenditures were 0.27 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020. We project that such expenditures will decrease to 0.25 percent of GDP in 2021 and continue to decline thereafter to 0.19 percent of GDP by 2045. Federal SSI expenditures are projected to grow more slowly than GDP both because the share of the population that will be potentially eligible for SSI will decline and because the maximum federal SSI benefit is projected to grow more slowly on average than the growth in average income in the future.

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1

Administrative costs do not include the costs of beneficiary services provided to recipients through State vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies and employment networks for VR services and payments under the Ticket to Work program.