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Contact Information

For general questions about the report, please call Alfreda Brooks at 410-965-9849 or e-mail ssi.asr@ssa.gov. Specific questions about the data may be directed to the contact person listed on each table. That contact information is current as of the release date. For additional copies of this report, please call 202-358-6274 or e-mail op.publications@ssa.gov.

Accessibility and Usability Information

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Highlights 2000

Size and Scope of Program

• In December 2000, about 6.6 million persons received federally administered payments. The average monthly payment was $379.
• Total payments for the year were more than $30 billion.
• This amount includes about $3 billion in state supplementation, where the state has chosen to make such payments.

Recipient Profile

• Most SSI recipients are eligible based on a disability (80 percent).
• Almost six out of ten are mentally retarded or have another mental disorder.
• Most of them (55 percent) have no income other than their SSI payment.
• The most common income is Social Security benefits (36 percent).
• About 35 percent of recipients live alone, and about 7 percent are in institutions or other "care" situations.

Encouraging Work

• Despite their disabilities, about 360,000 recipients (6 percent) were working at the end of the year.
• Among workers, one in three were able to take advantage of the work incentive provisions applicable to SSI.

Introduction

This report is intended to be a source document describing the SSI program and the people who receive benefits from the program. Tables and charts in the report cover a series of topics:

• Federal payment standards
• Recipient characteristics
• State-administered supplements
• Cross program payments
• Living arrangements
• Noncitizens
• Disability types
• Work incentives
• Resources
• Poverty
• Applications
• Awards
• Denials
• Suspensions

Changes for 2000:

For 2000, we have made a few additions to the report. First, we've added a new section on resources of SSI recipients. Recent policy discussions on changing the resource rules and limits have prompted these tables. Since the data come to us from an internal SSA annual survey, we hope to repeat them in future reports. We've also expanded our section on recipient characteristics to include several tables from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for December 1998. Although not quite as current as Social Security Administration (SSA) program data, this survey provides valuable information on recipient characteristics not available from SSA record sources, such as Medicaid recipiency and family incomes. To ensure that the survey respondents are SSI recipients, we have matched the SIPP data to SSA program records. Finally, we've begun a "poverty" section based on data from the SIPP survey. We will use the SIPP to report on how SSI reduces poverty among SSI families. We plan to expand this section in the future.

Four additional publications on the SSI program are also available on our Web site: State Assistance Programs for SSI Recipients; Children Receiving SSI; SSI Disabled Recipients Who Work; and SSI Recipients by State and County.

Errata

The print and electronic versions of this report contained several errors. In the initial printed version, the panel labeled Payments in Table 16 had incorrect data. The correct information for that panel appears in this electronic version and was made in subsequent reprints.

Both the print and electronic versions contained errors in Tables 13, 48, 52, 53, 57. In Table 13, the cells for Aged, Blind, and Disabled in Iowa referred to the incorrect note. In Tables 48, 52, 53, 57, the totals were incorrect. This electronic version contains the correct information in all five tables.

Table of Contents

The following files are available for this document in the given formats:

• SSI Recipients, by category and age
• Number of SSI Recipients, by age
• Number of SSI Applications received, by age
• Number of SSI Awards, by age
• SSI Blind and Disabled Recipients, by diagnosis