Social Security, the government pension plan that helps to support $67 million Americans, weathered the pandemic with less of a financial hit than expected, but some beneficiaries still struggled with their benefits through the crisis, a new report found.
Beneficiaries still got their checks, but Social Security office closures and a transition to remote work for the administration’s representatives affected some Americans from getting their disability claims filed, or answering pertinent questions about their benefits, according to a report from the COVID-19 Task Force Policy Translation Working Group of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI). Field offices reopened after two years, in April 2022.
Part of the problem could be attributed to the digital divide – meaning the gap between people with access to fast, secure internet access and those without it. With a focus on the internet to make administrative changes or file applications, some Americans are naturally shut out because they don’t have a computer, lack sufficient internet access or simply don’t trust using digital devices to manage important, personal information. Beneficiaries may also be forced to send sensitive documents, such as passports, through the mail when they lack access to an office.
“Doing things more online and virtually, that’s all wonderful,” said Louise Sheiner, policy director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings Institution and the principal investigator of the working group’s report. “Not everyone can do that.”
The number of new retirement benefit claims increased slightly in 2020, by 200,000, but then dropped in 2021, according to the report. Many of the retirement-age workers who left the workforce during the pandemic had likely already begun claiming Social Security to supplement their income, and the stimulus checks along with a strong stock market could have also helped beneficiaries postpone claiming benefits for the first time, the authors of the report wrote. The number of people who receive Supplemental Security Income and disability insurance benefits declined in part to office closures and a shift to remote work, the study found, and may have impacted the number of people who would have otherwise gone to a Social Security office to apply for benefits.
The digital divide did exacerbate inequities and disparities among racial and ethnic groups in terms of access to benefits and healthcare, but a lack of available data specific to these groups in the categories of health, housing security and income makes it difficult to determine by how much, according to the report.
The administration is currently facing a backlog for processing disability claims, a problem Kilolo Kijakazi, Social Security Administration acting commissioner, addressed in a letter to the Committee on Appropriations earlier this year.
“The initial disability claims pending level soared to almost 975,000 cases at the end of December 2022, more than 380,000 cases higher than at the end of FY 2019,” she wrote. “The average initial claims wait time through December 2022 was 206 days compared to 120 days in FY 2019. It will take a multi-year effort and sustained funding to restore our average initial disability claims wait times to prepandemic levels.”
Americans could see field offices close yet again if Congress does not finalize an appropriations bill before the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, said William Arnone, chief executive officer of NASI.
Economically, Social Security persevered, despite concerns that decreased economic activity and jobless claims would have disastrous consequences to the program. The trust funds that support Social Security’s retirement and disability benefits are expected to run out of funds a year earlier than the year before, the 2023 trustees report said, but in 2022, the estimated depletion date was a year later than expected. As it stands, if nothing were done, beneficiaries could expect to see a 20% benefit cut.
