In order to estimate future amounts of Federal expenditures under SSI, the projected Federal benefit rates shown in table
IV.A2 are first modified to reflect actual payment levels, taking into account historical and projected levels of adjustments for other actual or deemed income. Combining these actual payment levels with the projected numbers of persons receiving Federal SSI payments yields estimates of the amounts of Federal SSI payments. Historical amounts of such payments on a calendar year basis are shown in table
IV.C1. For purposes of this presentation, these payment amounts are computed on a cash-flow basis consistent with the concepts used to define SSI obligations for the Federal Budget. As a result, for months after January 1978, SSI payments due on the first of the month are tabulated in the previous month, if the first of the month falls on a weekend or Federal holiday.
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Using this cash-flow concept causes these payments to differ from similar amounts shown in other Social Security Administration publications, such as the
Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin, in two main ways. First, the payments shown in the
Annual Statistical Supplement are tabulated for the month the payment is due, while the amounts shown in table
IV.C1 are tabulated for the month they are actually paid. In particular, since January 1 of each year is a Federal holiday, SSI payments due on January 1 of years 1979 and later are actually paid in December of the previous year. Thus, for example, the calendar year 2008 payment amounts shown in table
IV.C1 reflect payments made in January-December, 2008, and include the payments due on January 1, 2009 (which were actually paid in December, 2008), but not the payments due on January 1, 2008 (which were actually paid in December, 2007). Second, beginning in 1991, SSI obligations as accounted for in the Federal Budget are not reduced for certain recovered overpayments which are remitted directly to the Department of the Treasury. The payments shown in the
Annual Statistical Supplement continue to report an amount which is reduced by such overpayment recoveries, as was done for the Budget prior to 1991.
Corresponding amounts of SSI outlays on a fiscal year2 basis are presented in table IV.C2 for fiscal years 1978-2009. Fiscal years prior to 1978 are omitted from table
IV.C2 since historical SSI payment amounts on a fiscal year basis for years prior to 1978 are not readily available. As with the calendar year figures, these fiscal year amounts are shown on a cash-flow basis. Consequently, fiscal years 1979 and later may contain 11, 12, or 13 months of payments, depending on whether October 1 of the current and succeeding fiscal years falls on a weekend.
3 Fiscal year 1978 contains 13 months of payments.
When projecting dollar amounts over longer periods of time, the changing value of the dollar due to inflation can make meaningful comparisons of such amounts difficult. For this reason, in projecting SSI expenditures for 25 years, some means of removing inflation is generally desirable. The CPI, as discussed in section IV.A, is an appropriate means of standardizing projected SSI costs over time. Constant-dollar values of Federal SSI benefit payments (those adjusted by the
CPI) are presented in table IV.C3 for both the historical period, calendar years 1974-2008, and the full 25-year projection period, 2009-33. This same information is presented in graphical form in figure IV.C1. Projections of the CPI used for this standardization are based on the intermediate economic assumptions of the 2009 OASDI Trustees Report.
The future growth in the “constant dollar” estimates is primarily attributable to the underlying growth in the U.S. population as shown in table
IV.A1. However, an additional contributing factor is the projected growth in the number of SSI recipients as a percent of the population, as shown in table IV.B7. A notable aspect of the time series of constant dollar estimates illustrated below is that there is a rather sharp level increase from 2008 to 2009 in these amounts. This level shift is the result of the combination of the spike in the CPI for the third quarter of calendar year 2008, which caused the large 5.8 percent benefit rate increase for 2009, and the drop in the level of the CPI for 2009 after the 2008 spike.
Although detailed projections of SSI State supplementary payments are not prepared, historical information on the amounts of such supplements administered by SSA is presented in table
IV.C4. These amounts are consistent with those presented in the
Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin and are shown only for the two broad recipient categories.
Historical information on State-administered State supplementary payments was previously included in this report, but is no longer included since complete data for all States is generally not available. Information on selected characteristics of State assistance programs for SSI recipients can be found in the Social Security Administration publication,
State Assistance Programs for SSI Recipients,
January 2008.
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