The Social Security Administration recently said that millions of people who get Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will no longer get their regular SSI payments from the government. The SSA says that more than 100,000 people across the country were taken off of SSI rolls last year.
Supplemental Security Income payments went down from 7,380,737 people in May 2023 to 7,261,342 people in May 2024.
This is because 119,395 fewer people were claiming SSI benefits in May 2024 than in May 2023. If you get SSI benefits now or want to apply for this Social Security program in the future, find out more about why the number of beneficiaries is going down.
More than 100,000 people will no longer receive SSI benefits in the US
Blind adults and children with little or no income who are disabled can often get SSI benefits. The 7.2 million people who get this type of benefit from SSA are in this group. They make up most of the SSI claimants (6.1 million). The other 1.1 million are aged 65 and up.
In particular, the number of disabled or blind claimants who were no longer getting the benefit dropped by 140,034 between May 2023 and May 2024, from 6,281,068 to 6,141,034 in those two groups. Overall, 20,639 more people aged 65 and up (1,120,308) got help than the year before (1,099,669).
There isn’t a clear reason for the drop in the number of blind or disabled users at that time. Newsweek emailed the SSA to find out what was going on and found that more than 10,000 people in several states were no longer getting SSI benefits.
It went down by 16,573 SSI applications in California from May 2023 to April 2024, even though the state had the most applications of any 50. Also, more than 17,000 people who were getting disability benefits lost their eligibility.
Most of these people were blind or disabled. The number of people who got help in this area dropped from 708,695 to 690,351.
Also, the number of people in Texas receiving SSI dropped by 14,587, from 591,710 in May 2023 to 577,123. The number of people applying for SSI also went down in other states with dense populations. For instance, New York reported a drop in the number of people receiving SSI, from 568,777 to 559,222.
In some states, the number of people getting SSI benefits stayed about the same. In North Dakota, the number of people getting SSI went from 7,923 last year to 7,906 this year, a drop of only 17 people. Only one of these people was not blind or crippled.
Finally, some other states also saw small changes. For example, in Rhode Island, the number of beneficiaries went from 30,317 in 2023 to 30,015 in May, an annual change of about 300 people.
Social Security changes in disability benefits, including SSI benefits
The SSA announced changes last month that will change how applications for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and SSI benefits are looked at. The agency suggested the change to make the process of figuring out if someone has a disability easier.
The government agency has said that changes will be made to the final rule to make the process of filing for disability benefits better and cut down on the time people have to wait for decisions.
The fourth step, which checks to see if the applicant can do any relevant work, is now easier because of the new rule. Under the final rule, which became law on June 22, 2024, the agency will only look back five years to see if work done before will still be relevant.
Before this change, SSA asked people to give a lot of information about their jobs over the past 15 years. This could make giving information hard, which could lead to wrong or incomplete reports.
The agency will also no longer look at jobs that start and end in less than 30 calendar days. The government organization said, “The new rule makes it easier for people to apply for benefits because they can focus on their most recent relevant job activity while still giving enough information for accurate evaluations.”
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