Social Security benefits play a vital role in reducing poverty in every state, and they lift more people above the poverty line than any other program in the United States. Without Social Security, 22.7 million more adults and children would be below the poverty line, according to our analysis using the March 2023 Current Population Survey. Although most of those whom Social Security keeps out of poverty are aged 65 or older, 6.2 million are under age 65, including 900,000 children.

Social Security is particularly important for older women and people of color, who have fewer retirement resources outside of Social Security. Depending on their design, reductions in Social Security benefits could significantly increase poverty, particularly among older adults.

Most people aged 65 and older receive the majority of their income from Social Security. Without Social Security benefits, 38.7 percent of older adults would have incomes below the official poverty line, all else being equal; with Social Security benefits, only 10.2 percent do. The benefits lift 16.5 million older adults above the poverty line, these estimates show.

Comprehensive studies that match Census survey data to administrative records suggest that the official estimates overstate older adults’ reliance on Social Security but confirm that Social Security lifts millions of older adults above the poverty line and dramatically reduces the poverty rate among people aged 65 and older.

Social Security is important for children and their families as well as for older adults. About 5.7 million children under age 18 (9 percent of all children in the U.S.) lived in families that received income from Social Security in 2022, according to Census data. This figure includes children who received their own benefits as dependents of retired, disabled, or deceased workers, as well as those who lived with parents or relatives who received Social Security. In all, Social Security lifts 900,000 children above the poverty line.

Social Security records show that 2.6 million children under age 18 qualified for Social Security payments in December 2022. Of these children, 1.3 million were the survivor of a deceased worker. Another 1.0 million received payments because their parent had a severe disability. And 322,000 children under 18 received payments because their parent was retired.

Social Security is especially important for women and people of color. Women tend to earn less than men, take more time out of the paid workforce, live longer, accumulate less savings, and receive smaller pensions. Social Security brings 9.4 million older women above the poverty line.

Black and Latino workers benefit substantially from Social Security because they have higher disability rates and lower lifetime earnings than white workers, on average. In addition, Black workers have higher rates of premature death than white workers, and so their spouses and children are more likely to be eligible for Social Security survivor benefits. Latino workers have longer average life expectancies than white workers, which means they have more years to collect retirement benefits. Without Social Security, the poverty rate among older Latino adults would be 43 percent, and the poverty rate among older Black adults would be 47.4 percent. Social Security reduces poverty dramatically among older adults in every state as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, as Figure 2 and Appendix Table 1 show. Without Social Security, the poverty rate for those aged 65 and over would meet or exceed 40 percent in over a third of states; with Social Security, it is less than 10 percent in nearly two-thirds of states. Social Security lifts more than 1 million older adults above the poverty line in Florida, California, and Texas, and over half a million in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan.

Unlike the official poverty measure, the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) counts government non-cash benefits, such as food or rental assistance, and tax-based benefits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), as income. Compared across all programs, Social Security has the greatest anti-poverty effects, according to the Census Bureau.

The SPM also subtracts from a household’s income various taxes, work expenses, and out-of-pocket medical spending. The poverty rate among adults aged 65 and older including Social Security is higher using the SPM compared to the official measure (14.1 percent and 10.2 percent, respectively), mostly because older adults spend significantly more of their incomes on health care than working-age adults or children. The poverty rate for adults aged 65 and older without Social Security would reach 48.9 percent using the SPM.

Among younger beneficiaries, poverty is lower — both with and without Social Security — because the SPM takes benefits such as the EITC and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits into account. Even after accounting for those benefits, Social Security lifts nearly 1.4 million children and 7.5 million adults aged 18-64 above the poverty line.