This section presents detailed information on the operations of the OASI and DI Trust Funds
1 during calendar year 2024. Chapter IV provides projections for calendar years 2025 through 2100.
Table III.A1 presents a statement of the income and cost of the Federal
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund in calendar year 2024, and of the
reserves in the fund at the beginning and end of the calendar year. As shown in this table, total trust fund income in 2024 amounted to $1,224.0 billion, while cost totaled $1,327.2 billion, resulting in a decrease in trust fund reserves during 2024 of $103.2 billion.
Income to the OASI Trust Fund based on the taxation of OASI benefits amounted to $54.4 billion in 2024. As first required by the 1983 Social Security Amendments, this income comes from two separate sources: (1) Federal income taxation on up to 50 percent of an individual’s or couple’s OASI benefits under certain circumstances, and (2) a tax withheld from the benefits paid to certain nonresident alien beneficiaries. For the direct Federal income tax portion, Treasury transfers estimated amounts to the OASI Trust Fund in advance at the beginning of each calendar quarter. Treasury makes subsequent adjustments based on the actual amounts shown on annual income tax records. There were three such adjustments made in 2024 resulting in a net transfer from the OASI Trust Fund of $1.3 billion. The amount of income from direct Federal income taxation on OASI benefits constituted approximately 99 percent of income from benefit taxation. The remaining 1 percent of the income from benefit taxation is the amounts withheld from the benefits paid to nonresident aliens.
In 2024, the OASI Trust Fund earned $63.7 billion in net interest, which consisted of: (1) interest earned on the investments held by the trust fund, (2) interest on adjustments in the allocation of administrative expenses between the trust fund and the General Fund account for the
Supplemental Security Income program, (3) interest arising from the revised allocation of
administrative expenses among the trust funds, and (4) interest on certain reimbursements to the trust fund.
Of the $1,327.2 billion in total OASI cost in 2024, $1,316.4 billion was for net benefit payments, including recovered overpayments, reimbursements from the General Fund for unnegotiated checks, and the reimbursable costs of vocational rehabilitation services.
2 Net benefit payments increased by 7.3 percent from calendar year 2023 to calendar year 2024. This increase is due primarily to: (1) an increase in the average number of beneficiaries during the year and (2) an increase in the average monthly benefit amount. The increase in the average benefit amount in 2024 was due in part to the automatic cost-of-living benefit increase of 3.2 percent which became effective for December 2023 under the automatic-adjustment provisions in section 215(i) of the Social Security Act. In addition, new beneficiaries tend to have higher monthly benefit amounts than previous beneficiary cohorts, because their initial benefits are based on average wages, which tend to rise faster than the cost of living.
The Railroad Retirement Act requires an annual financial interchange between the Railroad Retirement program and the OASDI program. The purpose of the interchange is to put the OASI and DI Trust Funds in the same financial position in which they would have been had railroad employment always been covered directly by Social Security. The Railroad Retirement Board and the Social Security Administration (SSA) calculated an interchange of $5.9 billion from the OASI Trust Fund to the Social Security Equivalent Benefit Account for June 2024.
Table III.A2 presents a statement of the income and cost of the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund in calendar year 2024, and of the reserves in the fund at the beginning and end of the calendar year. Line entries in the DI statement are similar to those in the OASI statement. The explanations of the OASI entries generally apply to DI as well.
Section 201(d) of the Social Security Act provides that the Treasury securities issued for purchase by the OASI and DI Trust Funds shall have maturities fixed with due regard for the needs of the funds. Each year, bond purchases for each trust fund are made on June 30, taking into account the projected reserve depletion date in the most recently issued Trustees Report. The usual practice has been to reinvest the maturing special issue securities, as of each June 30, so that the values of the securities maturing in each of the next 15 years are approximately equal. Accordingly, the Department of the Treasury, in consultation with the Chief Actuary of SSA, selected the amounts and maturity dates of the DI special-issue bonds purchased on June 30, 2024, so that the maturity dates of the total portfolio of special issue securities would be evenly spread to the extent possible over the 15‑year period 2025-39. The bonds purchased have an interest rate of 4.625 percent, reflecting the average market yield, as of the last business day of the prior month, on the outstanding marketable U.S. obligations that are due or callable more than 4 years in the future. Table
III.A7 shows details on investment transactions during 2024.
Table III.A3 presents a statement of the operations of the OASI and DI Trust Funds on a hypothetical combined basis.
3 The entries in this table represent the sums of the corresponding values from tables
III.A1 and
III.A2. The two preceding subsections that cover OASI and DI provide a description of the nature of these income and cost transactions.
Table III.A4 compares estimates of total income and total cost for calendar year 2024 from the intermediate projections in the 2020 through 2024 Trustees Reports to the corresponding actual amounts for 2024.
