Prevalence, characteristics, and poverty status of Supplemental Security Income multirecipients.

"Multirecipients" are people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments while living with other recipients (not including an SSI-eligible spouse). Using Social Security Administration records matched to Current Population Survey data for 2005, this article examines multirecipients' personal, family, household, and economic characteristics. I find that no more than 20 percent of the 2005 SSI population were multirecipients. Most multirecipients were adults, lived with one other recipient, and/or shared their homes with related recipients. Multirecipients were generally less likely to be poor than SSI recipients as a whole; but those who were children, lived with one other recipient, and/or shared their homes with a nonrecipient were more likely to be poor. Implementing sliding-scale SSI benefit reductions for children in multirecipient households would affect about 23 percent of multirecipients, or about 5 percent of all SSI recipients. Introduction Since 1974, the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program has provided income of last resort to the aged, blind, and disabled, and in December 2011, the program served 8.1 million recipients (SSA 2012a). This article examines the characteristics of SSI recipients who lived with at least one other recipient who was not an eligible spouse, in both the narrower family context and the broader household context. (1) The analysis starts by focusing on SSI families because the Census Bureau uses the family unit to generate official poverty estimates. In the family-level analysis, recipients who lived with at least one other related recipient are called "noncouple multirecipients" (NCMs). I then analyze the household unit to consider the full scope of recipients who reside with other recipients and the economies of scale they benefit from within their larger households. SSI recipients who shared their larger households with related or unrelated recipients are simply called "multirecipients." The analysis is based on matched Social Security Administration (SSA) and Current Population Survey (CPS) data for calendar year 2005. (2) With those data, I examine the personal, family, household, demographic, and economic circumstances of recipients living with other recipients and compare them with those of all other recipients. This article addresses four research questions: 1. How prevalent were NCMs in the SSI population and what proportion of them were children? 2. What was the family composition of NCMs? 3. How did the poverty status of NCMs compare with that of other SSI subgroups? 4. What proportion of the SSI population belonged to multirecipient households and what were their characteristics? Selected Abbreviations CPS Current Population Survey FBR federal benefit rate NCM noncouple multirecipient SSA Social Security Administration SSI Supplemental Security Income The article concludes with a summary of key research findings and their implications. Program Overview In 1972, Congress passed legislation creating the SSI program to ensure a minimum income for the aged, blind, and disabled to help them meet their basic food, clothing, and shelter needs. A person must meet three criteria to qualify for SSI payments. He or she must (1) be at least 65 years of age, disabled, or blind; (2) have countable resources at or below a legislated threshold; and (3) have countable income (including deemed income)(3) that is lower than the SSI federal benefit rate (FBR). Federal Benefit Rate Adjusted annually according to cost-of-living increases, the FBR is the maximum possible federal SSI payment amount. SSA uses one FBR to compute payments for individuals and another FBR for couples. In both cases, SSA considers the recipient's total countable earned and unearned income to determine the final payment amount. (4) If a recipient lives with a spouse who also qualifies for SSI payments, their payment amount is based on the FBR for a couple, which equals 150 percent of the individual FBR. …