SSI is the third program in the folder and the one almost nobody reads about. It is the cash floor for aged, blind, and disabled Americans with almost nothing. Its rules are written in dollars fixed decades ago, and inflation has been quietly rewriting them ever since.
Not Social Security. SSI is means-tested and paid from general tax revenue — no payroll tax, no trust fund, no depletion date. It cannot “run out” the way OASDI or Medicare Part A can. Whether it is adequate is a different question from whether it is solvent, and this page is about the first one.
Who it reaches
7.4M
People received federally administered SSI in January 2026, averaging $737 a month. That is the entire floor.
1.1 M aged; 6.1 M blind or disabled, of whom about 62,000 are blind.
Per month for an individual; $1,491 for a couple; $498 for an essential person.
$3,000 for a couple — unchanged in nominal dollars since 1989.
Source: 2026 SSI Annual Report, §II.C “Recent Program Experience” pp. 4–5; §III.C p. 7.
Source: 2026 SSI Annual Report, §II.C–D pp. 4–5.
In today's money · the benefit
The federal benefit rate rises with the same CPI adjustment as Social Security, so it holds its purchasing power — and only that. Deflated to 2026 dollars, the 1975 benefit was $944 a month. Today it is $994. Fifty-one years of increases; five percent of real gain.
Individual rate. The rising line is the cash amount; the flat line is that same amount in constant 2026 dollars.
Source: SSA, SSI payment standards, 1975 & later. Deflated with the CPI series underlying the 2026 Trustees Report.
At the kitchen table
Holding steady is not the same as keeping up. The CPI tracks prices — but wages have grown faster than prices across most of this period, so a benefit pegged to prices falls behind the living standard around it every year.
Measured against the average wage, the floor has dropped from 22 % in 1975 to 16 % today.
In the committee room
The report names the mechanism itself: the share of the population meeting SSI's tests “will decline over time as average wages and income generally grow faster than the CPI, and therefore the SSI Federal benefit rate.”
That is a relative cut delivered by an indexation choice, not by any vote. Moving the index from prices to wages is the one lever that reverses it.
Annualised federal benefit rate as a percent of the national average wage.
Source: benefit rate from SSA; average wage from the 2026 Trustees Report table VI.G1 and SSA's AWI series.
In today's money · the asset test
To qualify, countable resources must stay under $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple. Those figures were written into law to take effect in 1989 “and thereafter,” and were never indexed. Inflation did the rest.
The statutory limit has not moved. The line is its value in constant 2026 dollars.
Source: limit and effective date from the 2026 SSI Annual Report legislative history, p. 80: “The respective limits would become $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple in 1989 and thereafter.”
At the kitchen table
This is the rule that punishes saving. Put aside more than $2,000 — an emergency fund, a car repair, a small inheritance — and eligibility can end.
The limit was never generous. It is now worth less than two-fifths of what Congress set.
In the committee room
An unindexed dollar threshold tightens automatically every year and never appears in a budget vote. Indexed to the CPI from 1989, it would sit near $5,300 today.
The report notes most income exclusions are fixed the same way, so the same silent tightening runs across the eligibility rules, not just the asset test.
Where it is going
This program's actuaries project 25 years rather than 75. Their central finding is stability — which, given everything above, is itself the finding.
Source: 2026 SSI Annual Report, §II.D “Key Results From The 25-Year Projections,” p. 5.
At the kitchen table
If you are applying: an online SSI application opened in December 2024, but only for some adults meeting certain criteria. Everyone else still needs staff help.
The program reaches about eight million people over the course of a year. It is small, and for the people in it, it is everything.
In the committee room
SSI costs 0.21 % of GDP and is projected to stay there — roughly a twentieth the size of Medicare. It is not a fiscal problem.
GAO's standing recommendation is not about money at all: SSA still has no plan with steps, goals, metrics, and timelines to let all claimants apply online.