Adult OASDI Beneficiaiaries and SSI Recipients Who Need Representative Payees : Projections for 2025 and 2035

For Social Security beneficiaries and Supplemental Security Income recipients who are not capable of managing their own benefit payments, the Social Security Administration (SSA) pays benefits to a representative payee. We estimate that the demand for representative payees will increase from 2.94 million beneficiaries in 2013 to 3.27 million by 2025 and to 3.56 million by 2035. Growth in the number of retired-worker beneficiaries by 2025, and the transition of the baby boom generation into the 85-or-older age category by 2035, account for much of the increased demand for representative payees. Although 71.1 percent of disabled-worker beneficiaries who need a payee have a family member serving in that role, only 57.3 percent of retired-worker beneficiaries do. SSA should be prepared to recruit payees in numbers sufficient to meet the future demand, and to devote the resources necessary to monitor payees and prevent their misuse of benefits