The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently announced that recipients of Social Security benefits will receive a 0.3% increase in their monthly benefit checks. Though there have three years, 2010, 2011, and 2016, without a cost of living increase since Social Security implemented a cost of living adjustment in 1975, the recently announced increase is the smallest percentage increase of any year in which a cost of living adjustment led to a rise in benefits.
The relatively small 0.3% cost of living increase represents approximately a $5 per month increase for the average beneficiary. Many news outlets have correctly pointed out that the inflation measure utilized by the SSA to calculate cost of living adjustments is overly-reliant on a market basket that gives significant weight to gasoline prices, which have decreased significantly in the past year, and little to no weight to certain types of medical expenses, such as Medicare premiums, which have been growing in recent years. This is problematic because Social Security beneficiaries spend significantly more on medical care costs and housing-related costs than the average person. For this reason, many economic analysts have long argued that the SSA should utilize an inflation index that measures costs specifically experienced by the elderly and disabled. If the SSA were to have based its calculations on one such inflation index, the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E), the cost of living increase for 2017 would have been approximately 2.1% instead of the actual increase of 0.3%.
If you have questions about the coming cost of living adjustment or about Social Security disability benefits in general, please do not hesitate to contact Viner Disability Law by either calling our office and submitting a contact request through this site.