Background

As a service to data analysts and developers, we are providing flattened time series files concatenating SSI Recipients by State and County Tables 1, 2, and 3 from the 1998 (or 1999) edition through the latest edition. The files will be updated along with every new annual release.

The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files include publication- and table-specific metadata, including variable naming, relationships, and units, plus sources, notes, or footnotes. Users of the Comma-Separated Values (CSV) files should refer to the JSON files or the latest annual edition for these details.

These are beta release files. The schema (particularly measure and dimension ids/keys) may change based on:

• user feedback,
• evolving standards from the federal statistical community, or
• development of similar files for other SSA statistical releases.

To provide feedback, email statistics@ssa.gov.

Available Files

• Table 1. Number of recipients, by state or other area, eligibility category, age, and receipt of OASDI benefits, 1998 to latest edition
  • ssi_state_county_table_1.json
  • ssi_state_county_table_1.csv
• Table 2. Amount of payments, by state or other area, eligibility category, and age, 1999 to latest edition
  • ssi_state_county_table_2.json
  • ssi_state_county_table_2.csv
• Table 3. Number of recipients in state (by eligibility category, age, and receipt of OASDI benefits) and amount of payments, by county, 1998 to latest edition
  • ssi_state_county_table_3.json
  • ssi_state_county_table_3.csv
• Table 4. Number of persons receiving federally administered optional state supplementation, 2012 to latest edition
  • flat files not yet available

User Notes

• JSON and CSV files can be opened in any text editor or imported into any spreadsheet or data visualization application.
• These files are regenerated every year from the full archive of annual HTML tables, including any post-release corrections. Errata in 2026 or later will be listed on any affected edition's index page and this page.
• All editorial language matches the latest edition.
• Tables 1, 2, and 3: National or state totals are included in the flat files because the individual state/area or county values may not sum to the totals. This discrepancy occurs when county-level values for some recipients are unknown, rounded, or suppressed to avoid disclosing information about particular individuals. We leave it to end users to determine how best to handle this for their analysis.
  • While the original files for Table 3 labeled each state total row with "Total" and the state name, the flat files use the standardized term "State total" across all states to ease filtering and sorting.
• Table 1: From 1998 through 2000, the “All areas” row was labeled in the statistical tables as “United States” and included a footnote indicating the number of recipients from unknown states who were only included in that row. For cross-year consistency in the flat file, we've omitted that footnote and relabeled those rows as “All areas.” See the individual 1998–2000 editions for the original footnote information.
• Table 2:
  • Values from the 1998 edition are not included because the breakdown categories from Table 2 in 1998 cannot be matched with the categories in later editions.
  • From 1999 through 2000, the “All areas” row was labeled in the statistical tables as “United States” or “Total.” For cross-year consistency in the flat file, we've relabeled those rows as “All areas.”
• Table 3:
  • Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia contain at least one independent city that is not part of a county. For these states, the counties are listed in alphabetical order, followed by the independent city or cities in alphabetical order. This county/city distinction, noted in the statistical tables with panel headings, is not explicitly indicated in the flat file. To request the addition of a county/city indicator in the flat file, please email statistics@ssa.gov.
  • American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Codes were introduced in these statistical tables in the 2009 edition. For cross-year consistency in the flat file, we have inserted ANSI Code = null for the earlier years.
  • ANSI Code values are stored as strings to keep state-level values to two digits and county-level values to five digits, both with leading zeroes, as needed.
  • All measures are of type string because any value may be (X) (“suppressed to avoid disclosing information about particular individuals”) and we leave it to end users to determine how best to handle this for their analysis.
    • In older editions, disclosure-avoidance suppression was indicated in the tables by a “(1)” or a lettered footnote. The flat files are standardized to use the current (X) notation across all years, but the presence of this indicator reflects the disclosure protection methods in effect at the time of each edition's original publication.
    • For further details on suppression and disclosure protection, see individual edition Notes.
• Table 4: Because of cross-year variation in the structure of this table, a flat file is currently not available.