Social Security

County data on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program are a measure of local area impact of the program. This report is a resource for Social Security Administration staff in evaluating field office workloads and for local service providers and economic planners.

The SSI program is a cash assistance program for low-income aged, blind, or disabled persons in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The states and other jurisdictions have the option of supplementing their residents' SSI payments and may choose to have the additional payments administered by the federal government. When a state chooses federal administration, the Social Security Administration maintains the payment records and issues the federal payment and the state supplement in one check. The data presented in this document are for federal and federally administered state payments only. State-administered supplementation payments are not included.

Tables 1 and 2 present SSI payment data at the state level, by eligibility category (aged, blind, or disabled) and age. The data in table 1 on the number of SSI recipients with Social Security (OASDI) benefits are new this year and are also presented in table 3, which shows payment data at the county level, by eligibility category.

The data are drawn from the Supplemental Security Record, the principal administrative data file for the SSI program. To avoid disclosure of the reason for individuals' eligibility, data on eligibility categories are suppressed for counties with less than 15 recipients or where all recipients are in the same category. The amount of payments is not shown for counties with fewer than four recipients. Suppressed data are included in the state and national totals.

The data for this report were compiled in the Division of SSI Statistics and Analysis by Stella M. Coleman.

Peter M. Wheeler
Associate Commissioner for Research, Evaluation and Statistics
July 1999