Unearned income of Supplemental Security Income recipients, May 1982

About 3 out of 5 Supplemental Security Income recipients have some type of unearned income. The major source of this income is Social Security benefits. Other sources are veterans' pensions, pensions from employment, asset income, and support and maintenance in-kind. This article presents for the first time detailed estimates of the distributions of these income sources, based on a 1-percent sample of May 1982 recipients. In two-thirds of the cases, the Social Security benefits were between $100 and $260 a month. Unearned income from sources other than Social Security was usually smaller. Only 5 percent of the SSI population received less tha $100 in Social Security benefits. Differences in distributions for retired-worker and disabled-worker benefits, and for widow's and children's benefits are noted.