Supplemental Security Income

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits could be reduced and single-parent families' incomes increased if more children on SSI received child support enforcement services. Child support enforcement programs in Florida, New York, and Texas provided services to almost 45,000 SSI children in single-parent families in those states and collected child support for more than one-quarter of them. However, more than 52,000 other SSI children in single-parent families in those states did not receive child support enforcement services. GAO estimates that if their parents had been required to cooperate with child support enforcement services, annual SSI benefits to these children could have been reduced by $4.2 million, while the net annual income of the SSI single-parent families would have risen by $2.6 million. Even though savings to the government are not guaranteed, increasing the number of SSI children receiving child support enforcement services would help promote parental responsibility and boost the incomes of single parents, helping them to achieve economic independence and reducing their dependency on public assistance. Among the SSI children in single-parent families for whom the three states' child support enforcement programs collected support, GAO found strong evidence that many parents had not reported the income to the Social Security Administration (SSA) as is required. GAO estimates that in Florida, New York, and Texas, SSA overpaid $7.7 million in annual SSI benefits because this unreported support was not considered in calculating childrens' SSI benefits.

GAO noted that: (1) SSI benefits could be reduced and single-parent families' incomes increased if more children on SSI received CSE services; (2) the Florida, New York, and Texas CSE programs provided services to almost 45,000 SSI children in single-parent families in those states and collected child support for more than one-quarter of those served; (3) however, more than 52,000 other SSI children in single-parent families in those states did not receive CSE services; (4) GAO estimates that if their parents had been required to cooperate with CSE services, annual SSI benefits to these children would have been reduced by about $4.2 million, while the net annual income (considering the child support and the resulting adjustments to the SSI benefits) of the SSI single-parent families would have been increased by $2.6 million; (5) these potential benefit reductions would be offset by the costs for SSA to administer a child support cooperation requirement and by the costs, which could be considerable, for CSE programs to provide services; (6) even though savings to the government are not guaranteed, increasing the number of SSI children receiving CSE services would help promote parental responsibility and increase the incomes of single parents, helping them to achieve and maintain economic independence and reducing their dependence on public assistance; (7) among the SSI children in single-parent families for whom the three states' CSE programs collected support, GAO found strong evidence that many parents had not reported the income to SSA as they were required to do; (8) the Florida, New York, and Texas CSE programs collected support for 15,427 SSI children--12,841 living in those states and an additional 2,586 SSI children living in other states; (9) for 68 percent of these children, SSI records did not contain a report of child support income, indicating that their parents did not report the income to SSA; (10) GAO estimates that, in these three states, SSA overpaid $7.7 million in annual SSI benefits because this unreported support was not considered in calculating children's SSI benefits; and (11) these overpayments could be minimized in the future if SSA and CSE established a routine method of exchanging information on SSI recipients and child support collections.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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