Assistance program
Social Security Survivors Insurance
$860.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Social Security Administration, Social Security Administration
- Assistance
- Direct Payments for Specified Use;Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 96.004
- What it does
- Social Security helps survivors by providing income for the families of workers who die.
- Who benefits
- Widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses age 60 or over are entitled as long as the worker met the insurance requirements. Widows, widowers, and surviving divorced spouses also qualify at any age if they have entitled children of the worker under age 16 or disabled children in their care; unmarried children: under age 18, under age 19 and a full-time student in elementary or secondary school or age 18 or older and under a disability which began before age 22; and dependent parents age 62 and over. To claim benefits as disabled widows, widowers, or surviving divorced spouses, individuals ages 50-59 must show that they have a disability that started no later than 7 years after the insured died or 7 years after certain other events. "Disability" currently has the same meaning for these entitlements as it does for workers who claim disability insurance (see 96.001). As in worker disability claims, there is also a 5-month waiting period after the disability began before benefits begin and entitlement to Medicare after 24 months of entitlement to benefits. Children of the worker claiming benefits because of disability are also subject to the definition of disability used for workers and must show that they have been disabled since before they reached age 22. There is no waiting period for these benefits.
- Who applies
- Survivor family members.
- 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