The wealth of data in the Survey of Income and Program

Participation provide a unique opportunity to identify major types of Social Security beneficiaries and to characterize their relative socioeconomic status. Five types of beneficiaries are identified: the two types of worker beneficiaries (retired workers and disabled workers), and the three major groups with benefits based on someone else’s work record (aged wives, aged widows, and minor children). The different types of beneficiaries face very different economic circumstances. Retired workers and wife beneficiaries have the highest family incomes adjusted for family size. Aged widows and minor children have the lowest family incomes, with high proportions of poor and near poor. And disabled workers are in between, but also have high proportions of poor and near poor. Beneficiaries with high family incomes are very likely to live with relatives and to rely heavily on the relatives’ income, including substantial income from non-means-tested sources other than Social Security. Beneficiaries with low family incomes are very likely to live alone or with nonrelatives, to rely heavily on Social Security and means-tested benefits, and to have low asset holdings. Poverty among beneficiaries tends to occur in only some months of a year, often because of income changes of other family members.