Actuarial status of the OASI and DI Trust Funds

This article summarizes the current financial and actuarial status of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The results presented are from the 1984 Trustees Report and are similar to the results in the 1983 report. This year's estimates show that the Social Security Amendments of 1983 restored the financial soundness of the OASDI program. According to the actuarial estimates, benefits can be paid on time throughout the 1980's and for many years thereafter. Because trust fund levels are projected to be relatively low through 1987, however, the program could again experience financial difficulties in the near future if economic conditions become worse than anticipated under the pessimistic (Alternative III) assumptions. After 1987, the program's ability to withstand economic downturns is projected to improve. On the basis of intermediate (Alternative II-B) assumptions, the OASDI program is in long-range close actuarial balance. This actuarial balance reflects substantial year-by-year surpluses during the first half of the 75-year projection period that are slightly out-weighed by substantial deficits later on.     

Actuarial status of the OASI and DI Trust Funds

This article presents the summary of the 1988 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds. It summarizes the financial condition and actuarial status of the OASDI program based on the alternative projections. The long-range 75-year estimates indicate that, under the intermediate (II-A and II-B) assumptions, the OASDI program will experience about three decades of positive annual balances, with continuing annual deficits thereafter. The positive balances in the first part of the 75-year projection period nearly offset the later deficits, so that the program, as a whole is in close actuarial balance. Over the long-range projection period, the OASDI program has an actuarial deficit of 0.58 percent of taxable payroll, based on the intermediate alternative II-B assumptions and calculated on a level-financing basis. The DI program by itself, however, is not in close actuarial balance for the next 75 years. The actuarial deficit for the DI program could be remedied by a small reallocation of the contribution rate from OASI to DI, in such a way that the OASI program would remain in close actuarial balance. Although the Trustees are not recommending such a reallocation, they note that the financial condition of the DI program will need to be carefully monitored.     

Economic policy, intergenerational equity, and the Social Security Trust Fund buildup

For the next 75 years, the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) system is projected to be close to in balance, on average. For approximately the next 40 years, under current projections, the combined OASDI Trust Fund is expected to continually have excesses of income over outgo, creating a buildup that will peak in 2030 at about +12 1/2 trillion (roughly 23 percent of the gross national product). Thereafter, the system is projected to be in annual deficit continually until the trust fund is exhausted in 2051. This article focuses on two fundamental issues that must be understood if the potential economic consequences of this buildup are to be evaluated properly. The first issue deals with the fact that the nature of Federal economic policy during the buildup period will determine the ultimate economic impact of the buildup. The second issue concerns the effect of the buildup, and its disposition, on the Social Security program's treatment of one generation of workers compared with another. If a fund is actually accumulated as projected, part of the retirement benefits of the "baby-boom" generation will, in effect, be self-financed. If, however, that fund is used for other purposes--directly or indirectly--future cohorts of workers will be required to fully finance benefits promised to the baby-boom retirees.     

Actuarial status of the OASI and DI Trust Funds

This article summarizes the current financial condition and actuarial status of the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) program, as shown in the 1986 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. The Trustees note that the assets of the OASI and DI Trust Funds will be sufficient to permit the timely payment of OASDI benefits for many years into the future, on the basis of all four sets of assumptions shown in the report. For the next 75 years, the estimates show that the OASDI program, overall, is in close actuarial balance, based on the two intermediate sets of assumptions. The DI program by itself, however, is not in close actuarial balance for the next 75 years. The actuarial deficit for the DI program could be remedied by a small reallocation of the contribution rate from OASI to DI, in such a way that the OASI program would remain in close actuarial balance and OASDI benefits would not be affected. Although the Trustees do not at this time recommend such a reallocation, they note that the financial condition of the DI program will need to be carefully monitored for the next several years.     

Actuarial status of the OASI (old age survivors insurance) and DI (disability insurance) Trust Funds

This article summarizes the current financial condition and actuarial status of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, as shown in the 1987 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. The Trustees note that the assets of the OASI and DI Trust Funds, on a combined basis, will be sufficient to permit the timely payment of OASDI benefits for many years into the future, on the basis of all four sets of assumptions shown in the report. For the next 75 years, the estimates show that the OASDI program, overall, is in close actuarial balance, based on the two intermediate sets of assumptions. The DI program by itself, however, is not in close actuarial balance for the next 75 years. The actuarial deficit for the DI program could be remedied by a small reallocation of the contribution rate from OASI to DI, in such a way that the OASI program would remain in close actuarial balance and OASDI benefits would not be affected. Although the Trustees are not recommending such a reallocation, they note that the financial condition of the DI program will need to be carefully monitored.     

Stochastic models of the Social Security trust funds

Each year in March, the Board of Trustees of the Social Security trust funds reports on the current and projected financial condition of the Social Security programs. Those programs, which pay monthly benefits to retired workers and their families, to the survivors of deceased workers, and to disabled workers and their families, are financed through the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds. In their 2003 report, the Trustees present, for the first time, results from a stochastic model of the combined OASDI trust funds. Stochastic modeling is an important new tool for Social Security policy analysis and offers the promise of valuable new insights into the financial status of the OASDI trust funds and the effects of policy changes. The results presented in this article demonstrate that several stochastic models deliver broadly consistent results even though they use very different approaches and assumptions. However, they also show that the variation in trust fund outcomes differs as the approach and assumptions are varied. Which approach and assumptions are best suited for Social Security policy analysis remains an open question. Further research is needed before the promise of stochastic modeling is fully realized. For example, neither parameter uncertainty nor variability in ultimate assumption values is recognized explicitly in the analyses. Despite this caveat, stochastic modeling results are already shedding new light on the range and distribution of trust fund outcomes that might occur in the future.     

Social security: a program and policy history

Many of the federal and state programs that provide income security to U.S. families have their roots in the Social Security Act (the Act) of 1935. This Act provided for unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, and means-tested welfare programs. The Great Depression was clearly a catalyst for the Social Security Act of 1935, and some of its provisions--notably the means-tested programs--were intended to offer immediate relief to families. However, the old-age insurance program-the precursor to today's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, or Social Security, program-was not designed specifically to deal with the economic crisis of that era. Indeed, monthly benefit payments, under the original Act, were not scheduled to begin until 1942. In addition, from the beginning, the Social Security program has embodied social insurance principles that were widely discussed even before the onset of the Great Depression. The first four decades of the Social Security program were, in general, ones of expansion. In fact, the program was expanded even before it became truly operational. In 1939, amendments added child, spouse, and survivor benefits to the retirement benefits authorized by the 1935 Act. Those amendments also allowed for monthly benefits to begin in 1940. Although the program was not changed substantially during the war years and the initial postwar period, the 1950s were a transformational decade in the program's history: benefit amounts were increased substantially, coverage under the program became close to universal, and a new disability insurance benefit was offered. The 1960s witnessed additional growth in Social Security, but the most important development in social insurance occurred in health insurance, with the creation of the Medicare program in 1965. Legislative actions in the 1970s had profound effects on the Social Security program and, indeed, set the stage for many of today's reform debates. Large benefit increases, a new benefit formula that was erroneously generous, and other changes in the early 1970s created a situation in which annual program costs, as a share of gross domestic product, increased during a 12-year period from about 3 percent to 5 percent. In 1977, amendments to the Act corrected the flawed benefit formula and made other changes in the financing of the system to shore up the program. Thus, the 1970s represent a watershed in the program's history-program growth gave way to increasing concerns about the program's finances. Those concerns were reflected in the amendments to the Act in 1983, which were the last major changes to the program. These amendments, based largely on recommendations from a commission chaired by Alan Greenspan, adjusted benefits and taxes to address pressing near-term financing problems faced by the system. Although the Greenspan Commission focused to a large extent on short-range issues, the resulting reforms have generated large surpluses in the program and the buildup of a substantial trust fund. However, the looming retirement of the baby boomers and several other demographic factors will, according to projections, result in the exhaustion of the trust fund by 2042.     

Disabled workers and the indexing of Social Security benefits

We examine how benefit amounts and family income would change in response to changing the Social Security (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, OASDI) benefit indexing scheme. We are interested in a class of reform options designed to gradually slow the growth of benefits across the board. These options include the "price indexing" and "longevity indexing" proposals that have been part of the recent Social Security reform debate in the United States as well as a range of proposals developed in Europe. In this article, we focus on the distributional effects on the disabled. This focus leads to two comparisons. First, we compare disabled-worker beneficiaries to another group that would be affected by the changes, retired-worker beneficiaries. Second, we examine relative changes for particularly vulnerable subgroups of disabled workers. In the empirical analysis, we use two illustrative examples of potential indexing changes: Shifting from wage indexing to price indexing of the initial level of OASDI benefits; and Adjusting the initial benefit level for changes in life expectancy at retirement, that is, longevity indexing. We employ a historical counterfactual simulation to evaluate outcomes that would have resulted from changing the indexing scheme at one particular point in time. The hypothetical implementation period begins with the historical start of the current regime of indexing in 1979 and ends with one of the reference periods of the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a 17-year period. However, we briefly assess the extent to which the results would be applicable to other time horizons. The analysis uses a cross-sectional sample of OASDI beneficiaries from the 1996 SIPP matched to Social Security administrative records. Further, we use total income from the SIPP (as adjusted to correspond to the calculated OASDI benefit amounts) to simulate eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and SSI benefit amounts. Our overall findings pertain to three outcomes: (1) effects on OASDI benefits viewed in isolation, (2) the offsetting role of SSI, and (3) the diluting effect of other sources of family income. We find that a broader perspective incorporating all three measures is necessary to obtain an appropriate picture of distributional outcomes. Even though the proposals were designed to have proportional effects, differences between groups--such as disabled and retired workers--can arise from differences in the timing of benefit claiming, mortality, and other factors. Specifically, our cross-sectional estimates suggest that the average change in OASDI benefit levels would be higher for disabled-worker beneficiaries than for retired-worker beneficiaries. These differences are attributable to the fact that a higher proportion of the stock of disabled beneficiaries have been on the Disability Insurance (DI) program rolls for a relatively short period of time and therefore have been affected by the shift in indexing scheme for a longer period of time. These results must be interpreted within the context of the methodology that was used. Further, other methodologies may lead to different results. For example, in previous studies that restricted the sample to a particular birth cohort, a higher proportion of disabled workers than retired workers were observed to have been on the DI program rolls for a relatively long period of time. Longer time on the beneficiary rolls corresponds to less exposure to the new indexing scheme and smaller estimated benefit changes. Thus, the same underlying factor-the timing of benefit claiming-influences both results. When the offsetting role of SSI benefits is also considered, we estimate smaller overall changes, especially for those at the bottom of the income distribution. When OASDI and SSI are considered together, differences in average benefit changes between disabled and retired workers are removed. This is due to a higher rate of SSI program participation among disabled workers than among retired workers. In addition, including SSI substantially reduces the proportion of disabled workers that have large simulated changes in benefit amounts. The estimated effects of changing the indexing scheme are further muted when total family income is considered. This occurs on a roughly equivalent scale for disabled and retired workers. As a result, changing the indexing scheme would produce little change in the status quo differences in poverty status between disabled and retired workers. Finally, we examine the most economically vulnerable subgroups of OASDI beneficiaries. Within the general group of beneficiaries, we find that the most vulnerable would be less affected than average, primarily as a result of the mitigating effect of SSI benefits. Further, within the population of disabled-worker beneficiaries, we examine economically vulnerable subgroups including those in the lowest primary insurance amount quartile, with less than a high school education, with an early onset of disability, or a primary mental impairment. These groups would also be less affected than average.     

Actuarial status of the OASI and DI Trust Funds

This article summarizes the current financial and actuarial status of the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) program, as shown in the 1985 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees. The Trustees note that the combined assets of the OASI and DI programs will be sufficient to pay OASDI benefits on time well into the next century based on all four sets of economic and demographic assumptions. Based on the pessimistic assumptions, the DI program could become unable to pay benefits on time by the end of 1987, but this problem could be prevented by a reallocation of contribution rates between the OASI and DI programs. For the long range--the next 75 years--the Trustees estimate that the OASDI program is in close actuarial balance based on intermediate assumptions--that is, the average annual income rate is estimated to be between 95 percent and 105 percent of the average annual cost rate during that period. The long-range actuarial deficit based on the intermediate (Alternative II-B) assumptions represents about 3 percent of the average annual cost rate for the program.     

养老社会保险制度的反贫困分析——美国的实践及对我国的启示

在不同的社会保障制度模式下,养老社会保险的反贫困功能不一样。不同的养老社会保险制度设计会影响其反贫困功能的发挥。美国的公共养老保险制度——"老年人、遗属和残疾人保险(OASDI)"在计发办法上的累退倾向,在受益对象上不限于退休者本人还包括配偶、遗属和残疾人,在实际给付时关于受益类型、课税、最低和最高收益、随生活成本进行调整等政策规定,对于低收入者保护倾向非常明显。与美国相比,我国目前的养老社会保险存在覆盖面窄、水平偏高,受益水平差异偏大,缺乏不同的受益类型设计等问题。为推动多层次养老保障体系建设,我国养老社会保险制度改革的政策取向应该是降低现有受益水平,扩大覆盖面,并通过覆盖更多的低收入者来增强制度的反贫困效果。同时评估和改革个人账户,以防止养老金差异过大。     

Educational and economic characteristics of student beneficiaries: black-white differences

This article compares black and white student beneficiaries under the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) program during the 1972-73 school year from the standpoint of differences in economic and educational characteristics. The role that OASDI played in enabling students to continue in school full time is studied. The findings show that relatively more blacks were in the student beneficiary population than in the general student population; they were also overrepresented among students attending high school. Blacks were disadvantaged with respect to the educational attainment of their fathers and in terms of total family income. They also had lower-grade-point averages and those in high school were older than their white counterparts. Black high school students nevertheless planned to continue their education and to attend 4-year colleges in about the same proportion as whites. The total amount of educational income of black students was greater than that of white students, but the members of the latter group received more from loans and miscellaneous sources. Grants were the most important source of educational income for blacks. About half the student beneficiaries said they could continue full time in school without benefits and a third said they could not.     

Financing Social Security, 1939-1949: a reexamination of the financing policies of this period

This article examines the financing history of the U.S. Social Security system during the period starting with the amendments of 1939 and concluding with the amendments of 1950. It reviews the program's financing policies during this period, and in particular, a series of tax-rate "freezes" enacted during this time. The tax-rate schedule codified in the Social Security Act of 1935 was prevented from taking full effect during these years and the rates were "frozen" at their 1935 level for 15 years. This article seeks to explain the policy context of these rate freezes and their impact on the program's long-range financial solvency. Two major findings emerge from this research: 1. One of the most basic tests of any policy proposal involving Social Security is the projected impact of that proposal on the program's short-range and long-range financing. It would be virtually impossible to propose any serious policy change without a certification from the Social Security actuaries regarding the potential impact of such change. Although Congress enacted the 1939-1949 rate freezes in eight separate legislative acts, the legislative history contains no useable long-range actuarial estimates to gauge the impact of the rate freezes on program financing. How and why such an anomalous circumstance could arise is explored here. cies and has discovered that throughout the period from 1939 to 1950, the Social Security program was almost certainly rendered out of long-range actuarial balance by the rate freezes. How such a circumstance could arise, without serious policy debate, is then examined by situating the rate-freeze decisions in the larger frame of Social Security policymaking during this period.     

Projections of economic well-being for Social Security beneficiaries in 2022 and 2062

Policymakers considering potential changes to the Social Security program need to be able to assess how such changes would affect the economic well-being of future retirees. The first step to understanding these effects is to determine the well-being of future retirees under the current Social Security system. To this end, this article projects the retiree populations aged 62 or older in 2022 and 2062 using the Social Security Administration's MINT (Modeling Income in the Near Term) model and assesses their well-being. Because no one measure can fully capture whether future retirees will have adequate resources to meet their needs, we employ several indicators to assess retirement prospects. In addition, because current-law Social Security promises cannot be financed from current-law taxes, we project an alternative 2062 baseline that adjusts Social Security benefits downward to reflect the amounts that current-law taxes can support. Our results illustrate the importance of using several measures when assessing the well-being of future Social Security beneficiaries. When using absolute measures, retirement well-being will improve for Social Security beneficiaries in 2062 compared with those in 2022. Median per capita income of Social Security beneficiaries is projected to increase by a third (in real terms) between 2022 and 2062, with a corresponding decline in projected poverty rates. In addition, median financial wealth will increase between 2022 and 2062. Relative measures of well-being, however, suggest a decline in well-being between Social Security beneficiaries in 2022 and those in 2062. The share of beneficiaries who have low income relative to their peers, measured as the share whose income-to-needs ratio is less than half of the median ratio, will increase over time. In addition, income replacement rates are projected to fall between 2022 and 2062, indicating a decline in how well-being during retirement compares with that during the working years. And although median financial wealth will increase between 2022 and 2062, it will actually fall relative to economy-wide average wages. Projected improvements over time would lessen, and declines would be exacerbated, if instead of assuming the payment of currently scheduled Social Security benefits we assumed that benefits would be reduced according to what is payable under current-law taxes. Regardless of which measure of well-being is used, certain groups fare worse than others, including beneficiaries who never married, nonwhites, beneficiaries without a high school degree, and those with fewer years of labor force experience and low lifetime earnings. These vulnerable groups are likely to be more dependent on Social Security benefits for their retirement income. As a result, they fare particularly poorly under the assumption that Social Security benefits are reduced to reflect what is payable under current-law taxes.     

Comparing replacement rates under private and federal retirement systems

One measure of the adequacy of retirement income is replacement rate - the percentage of pre-retirement salary that is available to a worker in retirement. This article compares salary replacement rates for private-sector employees of medium and large private establishments with those for federal employees under the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System. Because there is no standard benefit formula to represent the variety of formulas available in the private sector, a composite defined benefit formula was developed using the characteristics of plans summarized in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Medium and Large Employer Plan Survey. The resulting "typical" private-sector defined benefit plan, with an accompanying defined contribution plan, was then compared with the two federal systems. The Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) is a stand-alone defined benefit plan whose participants are not covered by Social Security. Until passage of the 1983 Amendments to Social Security Act, it was the only retirement plan for most federal civilian employees. Provisions of the 1983 Amendments were designed to restore long-term financial stability to the Social Security trust funds. One provision created the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which covers federal employees hired after 1983. It was one of the provisions designed to restore long-term financial stability to the Social Security trust funds. FERS employees contribute to and are covered by Social Security. FERS, which is a defined benefit plan, also includes a basic benefit and a 401(k)-type plan known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). To compare how retirees would fare under the three different retirement systems, benefits of employees retiring at age 65 with 35 years of service were calculated using hypothetical workers with steady earnings. Workers were classified according to a percentage of the average wage in the economy: low earners (45 percent), average earners (100 percent) high earners (160 percent), and maximum earners (earnings at the taxable maximum amount). Overall, this analysis found that: Excluding Social Security benefits and TSP and defined contribution annuities, CSRS retirees have a higher pre-retirement salary replacement rate than either FERS or private-sector retirees. Private-sector retirees, however, have higher replacement rate than their FERS counterparts. Including Social Security benefits but not TSP and defined contribution plan annuities, CSRS retirees who are maximum earners have a higher pre-retirement salary replacement rate (despite receiving no Social Security benefits) than FERS retirees with the same earnings. Private-sector retirees in all earnings categories have a higher replacement rate than federal retirees with the same earnings. Including Social Security and TSP and defined contribution plan annuities, private-sector retirees in all earnings categories have a higher replacement rate than federal retirees, but their rate is close to that of FERS retirees. The rate is higher for FERS retirees than for CSRS retirees in all earnings categories. This analysis shows that replacement creates could exceed 100 percent for FERS employees who contribute who contribute 6 percent of earnings to the TSP over full working career. Private-sector replacement rates were quite similar for those with both a defined benefit and a defined contribution pension plan. Social Security replacement rates make up the highest proportion of benefits for th private sector's lowest income quartile group. The replacement rate for 401(k) plans and the TSP account for a higher proportion of benefits than does Social Security for all other income groups, assuming the absence of a defined benefit plan.     

Social Security Amendments of 1977: legislative history and summary of provisions

This article describes the legislative history of the Social Security Amendments of 1977 and contains a summary of the amendments. The major provisions revise the benefit structure so that future replacement rates--initial benefits as a percent of previous earnings--will be relatively stable and revise the tax structure to restore the financial soundness of the program in the short range and into the 21st century. Other significant provisions include: An increased special minimum benefit for long-term workers with future automatic adjustment to prices; a minimum benefit frozen at the December 1978 level (roughly $121) with automatic adjustment only for those on the rolls; a higher retirement test exempt amount of beneficiaries aged 65 and over; an annual measure of "quarter of coverage" and other changes in annual wage reporting provisions; and authorization for agreements with foreign countries for limited coordination between social security systems.     

Public pension reform in Japan

The March 2000 pension reform in Japan focused on the long-term financial sustainability of the country's two-tiered public pension system. The government opted for incremental changes in order to maintain pension solvency through 2060. Those changes could reduce future pension funding liability by an estimated one-third. Further, the decision to avoid structural reforms of its pension programs was based on fiscal considerations. Expanding general revenue funding for the first tier from the current share of one-third to cover the entire cost would require increases in the consumption tax that proved to be politically unacceptable. Fully privatizing the second, earnings-related tier would entail transition costs too great to bear at a time of rising budget deficits. In addition, the Japanese public generally supported the sharing of financial burden for public pension programs through a combination of benefit cuts, a raise in the pensionable age, and contribution rate increases. If current cost projections prove to be inaccurate, future pension reviews (scheduled every 5 years) will give the government further opportunity to fine-tune program changes.     

Adding immigrants to microsimulation models

Forecasts of the financial status of Social Security's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs and forecasts of the effects of various OASDI policy options on Americans would be improved if information about the earnings and labor force behavior of various population subgroups were included in projection models. Focusing on the projection of immigrant earnings, this article proffers a conceptual basis for incorporating immigration into microsimulation models. Key results from research on immigrant earnings, as described in the first article in this trilogy--"Research on Immigrant Earnings"--are linked to methods for forecasting individual earnings in microsimulation models. The research on immigrant earnings also inspires new methods for forecasting earnings in microsimulation models as well as the projection of immigrant emigration. Forecasting immigrant earnings and emigration is discussed in the context of a "closed system"--that is, forecasts are only made for a given population, which is represented in the base sample of the microsimulation model. The third article in our trilogy--"Incorporating Immigrant Flows into Microsimulation Models"--explores how to project immigrant earnings in the context of an "open system," which includes future immigrants.     

A note on sampling variance estimates for Social Security program participants from the Survey of Income and Program Participation

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) provides data that can be used to study the characteristics of Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program participants. It is important that estimates of sampling errors accompany such studies because the estimates may have large sampling errors due to the small number of sample cases available for specific analyses. The generalized sampling variances provided by the Census Bureau did not identify separately either program's participants and, therefore, do not pertain directly to analyses of these groups. This article describes an approach to the direct computation of sampling variances for OASDI and SSI program participants. The approach uses the pseudo stratum and half-sample codes available in SIPP public use data files. A table of generalized standard errors is constructed for participants of both programs aged 18 or older. Generalized standard errors could not be computed for child beneficiaries under age 18 because of a wide variation of design effects across subpopulation estimates.     

Improving child support enforcement for children receiving SSI

Less than half of all children who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits and live in a single-parent home receive child support services. Although filing for child support is a condition of eligibility for income assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), it is not a condition of eligibility for SSI benefits. Requiring single custodial parents applying for SSI on behalf of their children to pursue child support payments might result in more children on SSI receiving child support, and since the Social Security Administration (SSA) excludes one-third of child support when determining benefit amounts, increased receipt of child support would enhance the financial well-being of SSI children. Improving access to data on child support would enhance the integrity of the SSI program by reducing overpayments to children receiving child support. This article looks at the child support provisions in SSI and other means-tested programs and discusses policy options for improving receipt of child support and access to related data. Requiring cooperation with child support enforcement agencies would be consistent with the philosophy that the SSI program should serve as a program of last resort. Whenever possible, both parents should take primary responsibility for their children. While such a requirement has the potential to improve the financial status of children receiving SSI, factors such as their low-income status and their involvement with the TANF program raise questions about how much those children will actually benefit from such a requirement. Even if many additional children do not receive child support, the requirement demonstrates SSA's dedication to the stewardship of the SSI program. However, if custodial parents fail to comply with the requirement, children may be worse off as a result of the requirement. SSA should carefully pursue a requirement to induce cooperation while protecting children to the greatest extent possible. Improving access to child support data would enhance the integrity of the SSI program by reducing overpayments to children receiving child support. Given the reality of limited administrative resources as well as the apparent difficulties of gaining access to the needed child support data, SSA must decide which data matches to pursue and which requirements enhance the program enough to justify the additional resources. Although the options discussed in this article may be chosen independently, there are important interactions to consider. For example, although a requirement to pursue support might result in more children receiving child support, SSA would still rely on parents to report that income unless it was able to gain better access to child support data. Implementing the option to require cooperation with child support enforcement (CSE) agencies could improve verification of income from child support if field offices developed better communication with local CSE offices. However, by itself, it would not have as great an effect on overpayments as would having direct access to child support data. In a 1999 report, the General Accounting Office acknowledged that the potential benefit reductions would be offset by the cost for SSA to administer a child support cooperation requirement and by the costs to the CSE programs to provide services. The report suggested that the goals of promoting parental responsibility and increasing the income of children receiving SSI should be pursued despite the costs. Requiring cooperation may increase administrative costs by $6 million over 5 years and may result in program savings. Gaining access to data may be more expensive and may not prevent overpayments to the same extent as other data-matching workloads on which SSA has placed a priority. SSA should continue to work with federal child support enforcement and with individual states to develop a cost-effective way to identify child support income.