Size and Scope of the Supplemental Security Income Program

• About 8.0 million people received federally administered payments in December 2020.
• The average monthly payment in December 2020 was $576.
• Total payments for the year were more than $56 billion, including $2.5 billion in federally administered state supplementation.

Profile of Recipients

• The majority were female (52 percent).
• Fourteen percent were under age 18, 57 percent were aged 18 to 64, and 29 percent were aged 65 or older.
• Most (86 percent) were eligible on the basis of blindness or a disability.
• Six out of 10 recipients under age 65 were diagnosed with a mental disorder.
• Fifty-seven percent of SSI recipients had no income other than their SSI payment.
• Thirty-three percent of SSI recipients also received Social Security benefits.
• Of the people receiving SSI benefits, 1.3 percent were residing in a Title XIX institution where Medicaid was paying more than half of the cost.
• Despite their disabilities, about 292,000 recipients (4.2 percent) were working in December 2020.

Since 1974, the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program has guaranteed a minimum level of income for needy aged, blind, or disabled individuals. Each year, we issue a report that presents data on the SSI program and the people who receive benefits from it. The report covers such topics as:

• federal benefit rates, total annual payments, and total recipients;
• federally administered payments;
• recipients of Social Security, SSI, or both;
• children under age 18;
• noncitizens;
• diagnoses of recipients under age 65;
• recipients who work;
• applications;
• awards;
• outcomes of applications for disability benefits; and
• suspensions, terminations, and duration of eligibility.

Tables from the discontinued reports Children Receiving SSI and SSI Disabled Recipients Who Work were incorporated into this report beginning with the 2007 edition.

Aneer Rukh-Kamaa managed the preparation of this report and prepared the statistical tables and narratives. Staff of the Office of Dissemination edited the report and prepared it for publication.

Natalie Lu
Acting Associate Commissioner for Research, Evaluation, and Statistics
October 2021

All payments are federally administered payments.

All years are calendar years unless otherwise specified.

Numbers in the text and tables may not add to totals because of rounding.

Monthly data shown in tables are for the end of the given month.

Beginning with the 2020 edition, some of the mental disorder diagnostic groups have been renamed:

Also beginning with the 2020 edition, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses have been reallocated from the “childhood and adolescent disorders not elsewhere classified” group to the “other mental disorders” group to reflect the agency's adoption of an ADHD diagnostic code for both children and adults.