Each year Social Security beneficiaries brace for the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in the fall to find out what sort of increase in benefits they will receive the following year. Married couples who both receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) already know that their combined benefit amount will be less than two individuals in the same household who are not married and eligible for SSI benefits.
This is one of Social Security’s rules that does not make sense. The agency would say that a married couple will combine resources to provide for a household, but wouldn’t two un married individuals living together in the same household do the same thing? And if so, why is the married couple eligible for $400 less in benefits every month because they are married? The maximum monthly SSI benefit rate for an individual in 2022 is $841. The maximum monthly SSI benefit rate for a married couple in 2022 is $1,261. That is $421 less per month than two unmarried SSI beneficiaries. Below is a portion of a summary from a policy paper Social Security conducted on the matter.
The treatment of marriage is a frequent consideration in the discussion of government benefit policies. In the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, for example, two recipients married to each other receive a benefit that is one-quarter less than if they simply lived together but not as husband and wife. The treatment of marriage has been an issue in other means-tested programs as well. For example, legislation passed in 2001 reduced the marriage penalties identified with the earned income tax credit (EITC), an income supplement for low-income workers. Within that context, this paper examines SSI policy toward marital status.
Although each member of an SSI married couple is guaranteed an income level equal to only 75 percent of the federal benefit rate, they are generally financially better off than SSI individuals living alone. This comparison reflects the economies of scale from sharing living expenses as well as higher incomes. However, members of the opposite sex who cohabitate and do not marry (or are not found to be representing themselves as husband and wife) are each guaranteed an income level equal to 100 percent of the federal benefit rate and generally fare better financially than SSI married couples.
This paper identifies how marital status affects benefits and provides options for making the program more neutral toward marital status. The options include changes to three aspects of the SSI program: the benefit rate, income and resource exclusions, and counting spousal income and resources.
There is plenty of Social Security rules related to disability programs that should be changed or that should never have existed, but this is one rule that should have been dismissed long ago. The SSI benefit rate is already too low to allow beneficiaries to provide for themselves and penalizing married couples, by more than $400 every month, is just wrong. Under this rule Social Security is influencing SSI couples not to get married so they can receive the individual maximum SSI benefit, so much for marriage incentives.
