These guaranteed insurance benefits are especially crucial to people of color who tend to have fewer alternative resources, become disabled at higher rates and rely on Social Security's family benefit features disproportionately. Social Security is the mainstay of retirement income for people of color. Three in four older African American and Latino households rely on Social Security for half or more of their retirement income. A third of older African American and Latino households rely on Social Security for all of their income.
People of color are less likely to receive a pension or to have savings income.
That contrasts with 43 percent of older households overall. Only 33 percent of older African American households and 27 percent of older Latino households have savings income, compared with 67 percent of white households. African Americans are more likely than other families to need Social Security's survivors and disability benefits. Although African Americans represent about 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, nearly 18 percent of the workers receiving disability benefits in 1996 were African American. Furthermore, African Americans accounted for 24.4 percent of children getting benefits as the survivors of workers who have died, and 22.5 percent of those receiving benefits as the children of disabled workers.