Assistance program
Social Security Retirement Insurance
$8.7 Trillion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Social Security Administration, Social Security Administration
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 96.002
- What it does
- The Social Security Retirement benefit is a monthly payment that replaces part of your income when you reduce your hours or stop working altogether. The monthly payment does not replace all of your income.
- Who benefits
- A spouse and children can be beneficiaries of benefits under the worker’s record if the worker earned enough credits. Eligible beneficiaries include: • A spouse must be age 62 or older. • Spouse younger than age 62 are eligible if they care for a child (age 16 or younger) entitled on the worker’s record or if the child is disable. • Former spouses are eligible if age 62 or older and if the marriage to the worker lasted at least 10 years. • Unmarried children up to age 18, or up to 19 if they are a full-time student at an elementary or secondary school (grade 12 or below). Spouses who never worked or have low earnings on their own work record can file as beneficiary under the worker’s record. Children (including adopted children) of the worker can also file as beneficiary if they meet the age and student eligibility requirement.
- Who applies
- To qualify for Retirement Benefits, an individual (i.e., worker) must pay Social Security taxes to earn “credits†towards Social Security Benefits. The number of credits a worker needs to receive retirement depends on when the worker was born. Individuals born in 1929 or later need 40 credits (10 years of work). In addition of having the required credits, individuals must be age 62 or older and file and application with the Social Security Administration. Individuals can also get credits under Social Security systems of certain foreign countries if they are part of the International Social Security agreement. An individual (worker) and their qualified family members can file for benefits if the worker earned the required credits.
- Authorized by
- Social Security Act of 1935
- Program site
- http://www.socialsecurity.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments