The Impact of Closing Social Security Offices on Current Social Security Beneficiaries

• In Event: Growing Older, Growing Needs: Economic Insecurity, Caregiving, and Food Insecurity in Later Life

Abstract

The Trump Administration is quickly changing the size and geography of the federal government. With more than 120,000 federal workers already fired or furloughed and thousands more promised, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has dramatically changed the scope of the federal government and the services it can provide. When it comes to the Social Security Administration (SSA), DOGE’s efforts have already impacted service delivery: in just the first three months of 2025, phone line wait times at the agency have grown and the percentage of callers that have reached an SSA representative is the lowest it’s been since 2018. Importantly, DOGE has proposed closing 47 of the roughly 1,200 physical Social Security offices, including as many as 26 Social Security offices that were supposedly already scheduled to be closed in 2025. These changes will make it more difficult for individuals to use a wide range of SSA services, including applying for Social Security and Medicare benefits, changing names or acquiring different identification forms and certificates, and ensuring they are correctly paying payroll taxes.

Our analysis begins with the 26 offices that the Associated Press has reported the General Services Administration has proposed to close in 2025. We use the Urban Institute geocoder to convert Social Security office addresses into longitudes and latitudes to place each office in its larger geographic area such as census block, census tract, and county.

With office locations in hand, we conduct two sets of analysis: First, we use data from the Federal Communications Commission, SSA, and the Census Bureau API, to better understand the characteristics of the areas those SSA offices are intended to serve. Metrics include the distribution of age, race, gender, and education; the percent of people who are disabled; poverty rates; median household income; number and share of people in each area receiving retirement and disability benefits; and levels of broadband access.

Second, we calculate the increase in driving time for each community caused by the closure of an office. Instead of straight-line distances to each office, which don’t reflect physical travel distances, we use routing analysis (similar to Google maps at scale) to calculate real travel impacts on affected communities. For each proposed closure, this analysis generates a set of office-level metrics, like the number of people without broadband internet within a one-hour drive of the office.

The results of this project can be used to inform local, state and federal policymakers, advocacy organizations, direct service providers, and affected communities about the potential impact of closing Social Security offices on older adults and people with disabilities. In the long run, this framework can be used as the basis of a service needs assessment for other federal agencies and service providers.

Author

• Jonathan Schwabish, Urban Institute
  Presenting Author