The Gap Remains: Social Security Benefits Continue to Fall Short of Covering Basic Cost of Living for Older Americans, 2015-2020
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Older Americans rely heavily on SocialSecurity to support an independent lifestyle.Recent estimates suggest that among adultsaged 65 years or older, more than half rely onSocial Security for at least 50% of their familyincome, while nearly a quarter depend onSocial Security for 90% or more of their familyincome.Despite this substantial reliance on SocialSecurity among older adults, Social Securitybenefits fall short of what is required to covera basic cost of living across the United States,according to new estimates based on theElder Index, a county-by-county measure ofthe income older adults need to secure anindependent lifestyle. Nationally, the averageSocial Security benefit fulfills just 70% of basicliving expenses of housing, food,transportation, and health care for a singlerenter in 2020, and 82% for an older couple.Each September, a cost of livingadjustment (COLA) is determined for SocialSecurity benefits, based on the ConsumerPrice Index (CPI-W), and incorporated intothe coming year’s benefit adjustment.Typically, the COLA results in a modestincrease in benefits, although benefitadjustments have been set at zero threetimes since 2009. The COLAs used for benefitadjustment do not account for expenses thatdisproportionately impact older adults, suchas medical care, nor do they incorporatedifferences in costs of living acrossgeographic locations.In this report, we document spatial andtemporal aspects of Social Security benefits’coverage of older Americans’ cost of living bycomparing average Social Security benefits tothe Elder Index in 2015 and 2020. First, webriefly introduce the Elder Index and how it iscalculated to measure cost of living specific toolder adults. Second, we document theextent to which average Social Securitybenefits cover cost of living for older adults atthe national and county levels in 2020. Third,we compare patterns of coverage between2015 and 2020, identifying states whereSocial Security benefits’ coverage of the ElderIndex has increased, stayed flat, or decreasedover time. We conclude by discussing policyimplications.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it