Social Security Check

What Is This?

The average monthly Social Security payment that people 65 and over who receive one report to the Census Bureau's yearly income survey, since 1991, adjusted for inflation so every year is in the same dollars. It counts retired workers, spouses, and widows and widowers alike. Because it is what people report, it runs a little below Social Security's own records: people round, and some count what reaches their account after Medicare's premium.

Why Does It Matter?

For many retirees it is most of what they live on, and one of the few incomes that lasts as long as they do and keeps up with prices. The formula ties each new retiree's first check to the wages of their working years and every raise after it to prices, so a retiree's check keeps its buying power while each new, better-paid group of retirees starts higher.

Can Politics Influence It?

Congress writes the formula and has changed it: the 1972 amendments tied the yearly raise to prices from 1975, so no Congress has had to vote one since, and the 1983 amendments raised the full retirement age, which trims the check of anyone claiming at a given age. Keeping full checks paid as each retiree has fewer workers paying in will take higher taxes, smaller checks, or money from elsewhere, a choice only Congress can make.

Key Idea

The average can rise even when no one's check does: each year's new retirees earned more over their careers than the oldest ones they replace, and more of them are women with long work records of their own. Senior Household Income already scores what older households live on, so this line is charted and not scored.

Not Scored