2022 Annual Report of the SSI Program

II. Highlights

The SSI program is a nationwide Federal assistance program administered by SSA that guarantees a minimum level of income for aged, blind, or disabled individuals. This section presents highlights of recent SSI program experience, a summary of important legislative changes to the program in the last year, a discussion of current issues facing the SSI program, and a summary of the key results from the 25-year projections.

A. Recent Program Experience

SSI program experience during the past year included the following:

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During calendar year 2021, 1.2 million individuals applied for SSI benefits based on blindness or disability, a decrease of 7 percent as compared to the 1.3 million who applied in 2020. Additionally, about 146,000 individuals applied for SSI benefits based on age, an increase of 51 percent as compared to the roughly 96,000 who applied in 2020. In 2021, about 529,000 applicants became new recipients of SSI benefits, a decrease of 11 percent as compared to the roughly 597,000 who became new recipients in 2020.

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Each month on average during calendar year 2021, 7.7 million individuals received Federal SSI benefits. This group was composed of 1.1 million aged recipients and 6.6 million blind or disabled recipients, of which about 64,000 were blind. Of these 6.6 million blind or disabled recipients, 1.1 million were under age 18, and 1.1 million were aged 65 or older. During calendar year 2021, 8.4 million aged, blind, or disabled individuals received Federal SSI benefits for at least 1 month.

•	Federal expenditures for payments under the SSI program in calendar year 2021 totaled $55.4 billion, a decrease from $56.4 billion in 2020.

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Each month on average during calendar year 2021, 1.4 million individuals received federally administered State supplementation payments. This group was composed of approximately 387,000 aged recipients and approximately 995,000 blind or disabled recipients, of which about 18,000 were blind. Of these approximately 995,000 blind or disabled recipients, about 115,000 were under age 18, and about 265,000 were aged 65 or older. During calendar year 2021, 1.5 million aged, blind, or disabled individuals received State supplementation payments for at least 1 month.

•	State expenditures for federally administered State supplements, excluding fees for Federal administration, totaled $2.4 billion in calendar year 2021, a decrease from $2.5 billion in 2020.

•	The cost SSA incurred to administer the SSI program in FY 2021 was $4.5 billion, which was roughly 8 percent of total federally administered SSI expenditures.1

•	In January 2022, 7.7 million individuals received federally administered monthly SSI benefits averaging $625. Of these, 7.6 million received monthly Federal SSI payments averaging $603, and 1.4 million received monthly State supplementation payments averaging $179.

B. SSI Legislation Since The 2021 Annual Report

Section 2502 of the Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022² allows certain citizens or nationals of Afghanistan (or individuals with no nationality who last habitually resided in Afghanistan) to be temporarily eligible for SSI benefits if they:

•	were paroled into the United States between July 31, 2021 and September 30, 2022; or

•	were paroled into the United States after September 30, 2022 and are either the spouse, child, or parent or legal guardian (of an unaccompanied minor) of a person described in the prior bullet.

To be eligible for SSI benefits, these people would also need to meet the other requirements of the SSI program, such as being at least age 65 or disabled or blind, and having countable income and resources below certain limits.

Eligibility for these individuals ends on the later of March 31, 2023 or when the person’s parole period ends.

C. Current Issues Facing The SSI Program

For almost 50 years, the SSI program has provided a financial safety net for aged, blind, and disabled Americans who have nowhere else to turn. The program plays a crucial role in the lives of about eight million people and is funded from general tax revenues. Accordingly, we take great care to administer the program as accurately and efficiently as possible and remain committed to effectively overseeing the program, protecting taxpayer dollars, and maintaining the public’s trust by paying the right person the right benefit at the right time.

Outreach to People Facing Barriers During the Pandemic

The pandemic has imposed hardships on our country’s most vulnerable citizens, many of whom are elderly, have low incomes, have limited English proficiency, face homelessness, or experience mental illness. SSI benefits are a crucial lifeline that not only helps vulnerable people meet their basic needs of food and shelter, but in many places SSI eligibility also serves as a gateway that provides automatic eligibility for other programs, such as Medicaid. SSI applications decreased from their pre-pandemic levels. In response, we have prioritized our outreach to vulnerable populations to ensure the public is aware of and can access SSI and our other benefit programs.

We have worked closely on this effort with a variety of interested parties, including representatives of the non-profit community; health care organizations; private industry; the advocate community; and Federal, State, and local governments. Through our partnerships, these groups help share information about our programs, assist in taking SSI claims, and actively refer individuals potentially eligible for SSI to our field offices.

We have enhanced our communications and online content to further support these efforts. For example, we conducted a national advertising campaign on TV, radio, and social media to bolster our outreach efforts, with special emphasis on children with disabilities. We are also conducting mailed outreach to certain Social Security beneficiaries who may be eligible for SSI, which we started in December 2020. We plan to send an additional 735,000 of these SSI outreach letters over the second half of calendar year 2022.

Online Protective Filing

In March 2022, we released an online tool that allows people to let us know when they or someone else is interested in filing for SSI. We record the date the request is successfully submitted using the tool as the “protective filing date” for the interested person, and we contact them to take their application. A protective filing date is important when a person can’t apply for benefits right away because we may use the protective filing date as the date of the application if the person applies within the provided time frame. This process protects individuals against a loss of benefits.

D. Key Results From The 25-Year Projections

The major findings in the 25-year projections prepared for this report are:

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Following small declines in the SSI recipient population in the late 1990s due to the combined impact of Public Law 104-121 (the Contract with America Advancement Act of 1996) and Public Law 104-193 (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), modest growth in the SSI rolls resumed in 2000. The economic recession that began in late 2007 led to faster growth in the SSI recipient population through 2013, but in recent years the SSI recipient population has slightly declined as the number of applicants for SSI payments declined through 2020. The number of applications decreased sharply in 2020 and remained low in 2021, due to a number of pandemic-related effects. In 2022 and 2023, the number of applications is projected to increase, reaching levels more consistent with longer-term expected experience, and then remain at roughly this level thereafter. By 2046, we project that the Federal SSI recipient population will reach 8.3 million. As a percentage of the total Social Security area population, we project the number of Federal SSI recipients to decrease very gradually from 2.26 in 2021 to 2.15 percent of the population by 2046. This occurs for several reasons, including that the percent of the population potentially eligible for SSI based on their citizenship and residency status is projected to decline slightly in the future.

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We project that Federal expenditures for SSI payments in calendar year 2022 will increase by $2.0 billion to $57.4 billion, an increase of 3.5 percent from 2021 levels. In dollars adjusted by the Consumer Price Index to 2022 levels, we pro­ject that SSI program outlays will increase to $65.4 billion in 2046, a real increase of 0.5 percent per year.

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Federal SSI expenditures were 0.24 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021. We project that such expenditures will decrease to 0.23 percent of GDP in 2022 and continue to decline thereafter to 0.18 percent of GDP by 2046. Federal SSI expenditures are projected to grow more slowly than GDP both because the share of the population that will be potentially eligible for SSI will decline and because the maximum Federal SSI benefit is projected to grow more slowly on average than the growth in average income in the future.

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1

Administrative costs do not include the costs of beneficiary services provided to recipients through State vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies and employment networks for VR services and payments under the Ticket to Work program.

2

Division C in the Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 117-43), which was enacted on September 30, 2021.