Social Security Beneficiaries and Aged SSI Recipients by State & County, 1970-2018: Description and Dataset

This paper describes the digitization of county-level data from Social Security Administration publications on Social Security Retirement and Survivors Insurance beneficiaries and Supplemental Security Income for the Aged. Data sets are created that begin in the 1970s and go through until 2018, which are merged with population data to create rates of receipt in the population. The variables are described and then used to analyze patterns in receipt across counties and over time. Other data are also merged with these data to examine what is correlated with the number of beneficiaries and recipients at the county level. The data will be made freely available for use in examining a wide variety of questions around retirement and social insurance at older ages.