Social Security Update Could Expand Benefits to Millions

People shop for food in a Brooklyn neighborhood that has a large immigrant and elderly population on October 16, 2023 in New York City.

Social Security has expanded access to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program to potentially millions of Americans by expanding the definition of a public assistance (PA) household.

A PA household, according to the now-discarded definition, was one in which every member receives some kind of public income-maintenance (PIM) payments under programs including Social Security (SSI); Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC); Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF); the Refugee Act of 1980; and the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, among others.

Under the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) recently published final rule, the agency is expanding the definition of a PA household to include those receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments and households where not all members receive public assistance.

This means that one can be considered a PA household if it has both an SSI applicant or recipient and at least one other household member who receives one or more of the listed means-tested PIM payments—with no requirements for all members to receive such payments.

The agency says that the expanded definition will allow more people to qualify for SSI; boost some SSI recipients’ monthly payments; and reduce reporting burdens for individuals living in PA households. This is because, if an SSI recipient is living in a PA household, the SSA assumes they are not receiving assistance from other household members that would be counted as income.

The SSI program pays monthly benefits to people with limited income and resources who are blind, age 65 or older, or have a qualifying disability. Children with disabilities or who are blind can also be recipients. The maximum monthly SSI payment that a recipient can get in 2024 is $943 for individuals and $1,415 for a couple.

“I’m committed to making systemic changes to help people access the critical benefits they need, including SSI,” Commissioner of Social Security Martin O’Malley said in a news release announcing the final rule.

“By simplifying our policies and including an additional program geared toward low-income families, such as the SNAP, we are removing significant barriers to accessing SSI. These changes promote greater equity in our programs,” O’Malley added.

SNAP is the first PIM benefit to be added to the agency’s PA household definition since it was established in 1980. While the numbers can change from month to month, the latest data on SNAP, as per the Pew Research Center, shows that millions of Americans rely on the program to put enough food on the table.

In April 2023, according to the center, 41.9 million people in 22.2 million households received SNAP benefits—about 12.5 percent of the population.

The SSA’s 2023 annual report of the SSI program said that 7.4 million individuals received monthly Federal SSI payments in January 2023, averaging $654. That represented a drop of about 136,000 recipients from the 7.6 million recorded a year earlier.

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