Shared Households and the Antipoverty Impacts of Older Adults’ Social Security Benefits

• In Event: Demography of Housing Inequality and Instability

Abstract

In the U.S., older adults have more robust social safety net support than other groups. Most notably, they are the primary beneficiaries of Social Security, the country’s largest antipoverty program. However, 21% of older adults live in a shared household (with an adult extended family member or nonrelative), and these households may broaden the reach of public benefits beyond their intended targets. We use the 2014-2022 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine how older adults’ shared households may extend the antipoverty reach of Social Security benefits. We find that Social Security benefits are an important source of income in older adult beneficiaries’ shared households, making up about a third of the total household income. Social Security income lifts household income above the poverty rate in nearly one-fifth of these households, impacting not only older adult beneficiaries, but also the many non-beneficiaries with whom they share a home, primarily single adults without coresident children who have extremely low incomes. These findings suggest that Social Security may have benefits well beyond its intended target population, including for adults who are eligible for little public support themselves, and that policy changes to Social Security may have broad ripple effects.

Authors

• Hope Harvey, University of Kentucky

• Kristin Perkins, Georgetown University