This section presents projections of the numbers of persons receiving Federal SSI payments by category and age group.
1 The SSI recipient categories of (1)
aged or (2)
blind or
disabled identify the criteria under which the recipient established eligibility for SSI benefit
s. The following paragraphs discuss the recipient categories in more detail.
Table IV.B1 presents historical and projected numbers of persons applying for SSI benefits, by calendar year. Figure IV.B1 presents the same information in graphical form. Experience within the past decade shows the number of applications growing fairly rapidly beginning in calendar year 2002, with the growth continuing through calendar year 2005. The rate of growth in applications slowed significantly from 2005 to 2007, but started increasing again in 2008, with a noteworthy 14 percent increase in 2009, largely due to the economic recession. The level of applications remained high in 2010 with a further 2 percent increase over 2009. Two main factors contributed to the fairly rapid growth in applications from 2002 to 2004: (1) the downturn in the economy that began early in 2001 and (2) implementation of the signature proxy process
3 that SSA introduced in June 2004. We presume that the current downturn caused the recent
large increase in applications. During the continued economic slowdown, we project higher levels of unemployment, resulting in substantially more applications than the general trend suggests. We expect fewer applications as the economy recovers. Some of the earlier additional applications will be cases that would have applied in a later year, so, for a brief period, we expect fewer applications than the general trend suggests. In the longer term, we estimate that applications will grow roughly in line with overall population growth.
As part of our adjudication of these applications, we evaluate levels of income and resources available to the applicants, as well as other eligibility factors including marital and citizenship status and living arrangements. In addition, well over 90 percent of the applications are for disability benefits which require the appropriate State DDS to evaluate the alleged impairment. Applicants may appeal an unfavorable disability determination through several administrative levels of appeal. If an applicant exhausts all administrative levels of appeal, he or she may carry the appeal to the Federal courts.
4
Table IV.B2 and figure
IV.B2 present historical and projected numbers of persons who start receiving SSI payments as a result of this decision process. We count individuals as of the first month that they move into SSI payment status. For this reason, we refer to these individuals as “
new recipients” rather than “
awards.”
5 From 2002 to 2004, growth in new recipients did not keep pace with the growth in applications, and from 2005 to 2007, the numbers of new recipients declined, even though the numbers of applications increased. Two main factors contributed to the slower growth for new recipients as compared to applications. First, since 2001 the number of claims pending adjudication significantly increased. This
growth was consistent with a longer lag time between application and the allowance decision. Second, after the introduction of the signature proxy process, the number of denials for applications not meeting the nonmedical criteria increased significantly, causing a permanent downward shift in the allowance rate. Starting in 2008, however, the numbers of new recipients increased substantially. This increase was likely attributable to: (1) the sharp increase in applications; (2) improvements in claims processing; and (3) an initiative to accelerate the processing of cases pending adjudication. Consistent with the projected applications, we project the total number of new recipients to peak in 2011 and decline thereafter to a relative low point by 2017. Over the longer term, we project the number of new recipients to increase gradually in line with the projected growth in applications.
Some persons receiving SSI benefits in a year will stop receiving payments during the year because of death or the loss of SSI eligibility. A recipient can lose eligibility in two ways: (1) a nonmedical redetermination; or (2) a continuing disability review (CDR).
6 In a redetermination, we reexamine the recipient's nonmedical factors of eligibility, including income and resources. In a CDR, we determine whether the recipient continues to meet the Social Security Act's definition of disability. For example, disabled children, upon attainment of age 18, lose eligibility if they do not qualify for benefits under the disabled adult eligibility criteria. We refer to the net reduction in the number of SSI recipients in
current-payment status during a period as the number of SSI terminations for that period.
In the following tables, we have separated the numbers of persons moving out of payment status into terminations due to death (table
IV.B3), and terminations for all other reasons (table
IV.B4). Table
IV.B5 and figure
IV.B3 present historical and projected numbers of total terminations by calendar year. The actual number of terminations in 2010 continued at a fairly high level despite declining more than 3 percent from 2009 levels. The reduction in the number of terminations is due to a decline in the number of terminations
Combining the number of persons coming on the SSI payment rolls during a year with the number of those already receiving benefits at the beginning of the year, and subtracting the number leaving the rolls during the year, yields the number of persons receiving Federally-administered SSI payments at the end of the year. Table IV.B6 and figure IV.B4 present the number of individuals receiving Federal SSI payments, who comprise the great majority of Federally-administered recipients. The number of Federal SSI recipients at the end of 2010 increased by about 3.1 percent over the corresponding number at the end of 2009 but is relatively close to what we projected in last year's report.
As figure IV.B4 illustrates, the implementation of Public Law 104-121 and Public Law 104-193 resulted in a decline in the Federal recipient population from 1996 to 1997. From the end of 1997 through the end of 2000, the Federal SSI recipient population grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent. From the end of 2000 to the end of 2009, the Federal SSI recipient population grew an average of 1.8 percent per year. However, as noted above, the Federal recipient population grew 3.1 percent during 2010, and we project the economic slowdown to result in continued rapid growth with year-to-year increases from the end of 2010 through the end of 2013 averaging approximately 3.1 percent. Beginning in 2014, the growth in the projected numbers of Federal SSI recipients returns to a rate of about 1 percent per year over the remainder of the 25-year projection period. In order to place this projected growth in the context of overall population growth, table IV.B7 and figure IV.B5 present Federal SSI recipients as percentages of selected Social Security Area population totals.
In table IV.B7, we calculated the age group percentages using the corresponding population age group totals. We computed the ratios for the separate recipient categories—
total blind or disabled and
total aged—as percentages of differing base populations, the total Social Security Area population and the 65 and older Social Security population, respectively. As a result of this method of calculation, the percentage for the total SSI recipient population is not the arithmetic sum of the percentages for the respective recipient categories. The percentage of the total Social Security Area population who were receiving Federal SSI payments declined from 1975 through the early 1980s. In 1983, this percentage started increasing and continued to increase through 1996. The percentage of the total population receiving Federal SSI payments declined in 1997, due to the implementation of Public Law 104-121 and Public Law 104-193, but leveled out over the next few years. It has increased slightly over the past few years, and we expect it to continue to increase through 2015 and then remain essentially level through the rest of the projection period. Almost 80 percent of the increase in the percentage of the population receiving Federal SSI payments, from 2.42 in 2010 to 2.60 in 2035, is attributable to the changing age distribution in the population.
The various subcategories of Federal SSI recipients, however, follow significantly different growth patterns in relation to their respective population totals. The aged Federal SSI recipient population declines steadily as a percentage of the 65 or older population throughout the historical period and most of the projection period, with the decline leveling off near the end of the projection period. In contrast, except for decreases in the late 1990s due to the eligibility redeterminations and continuing disability reviews mandated by Public Law 104-193, the number of blind or disabled children receiving Federal SSI payments increased steadily throughout the historical period as a percentage of the under age 18 population, with the increase being quite steep in the early 1990s. The total blind or disabled Federal SSI recipient population as a percentage of the total population remained fairly level until the early 1980s when it started increasing and continued to increase through 1996. The proportion of the population receiving SSI blind or disabled benefits declined slightly in the late 1990s due to the effects of welfare reform legislation, but resumed its upward trend in 2000. That upward trend has continued through 2010, and we estimate it will continue through 2014, reaching more than 2.2 percent of the total population. In the later years of the projection period, the estimated proportion of the population receiving SSI blind or disabled benefits will gradually decline due to: (1) a smaller proportion of the population becoming new recipients than during the current economic slowdown; (2) the changing age distribution in the population; and (3) our assumption that SSA will receive the resources necessary to process normal CDR and nonmedical redetermination workloads.
Table IV.B8 presents historical and projected numbers of individuals who receive only a Federally-administered State supplement.
Table IV.B9 displays the combined numbers of persons receiving either a Federal SSI payment or a Federally-administered State supplement.
Certain noteworthy patterns appear in the numbers of SSI recipients in the recent past and projections of such numbers for the near future. The total number of SSI recipients increased rapidly in the early 1990s due to the growth in the numbers of disabled adults and children. The growth in the numbers of children receiving SSI resulted in large part from the Supreme Court decision in the case of
Sullivan v. Zebley, which greatly expanded the criteria used for determining disability for children. The growth in the numbers of disabled adults is a more complicated phenomenon. Extensive research conducted under contract to SSA and the Department of Health and Human Services suggests that this growth was the result of a combination of factors including: (1) demographic trends; (2) a downturn in the economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s; (3) long-term structural changes in the economy; and (4) changes in other support programs (in particular, the reduction or elimination of general assistance programs in certain States). The current economic downturn, the economic downturn in the early 2000s, and welfare reform legislation have contributed to the more recent, relatively modest changes in program participation.
