Supplemental Security Income

The Social Security Act, legislated in 1935, created the basic programs known today as Old Age, Survivors, and Disabilities Insurance (OASDI) that provides a base of income security for workers and their families when their income stopped due to retirement, disability, or death of the breadwinner. Some, however, did not qualify for these benefits and others qualified only for benefits that were very low. To aid these people, state-administered, means-tested assistance programs for the aged (1935), blind (1935), and disabled (1950) were added to the original Social Security Act. These additions to the law provided only very broad guidelines to the states. There were no maximum or minimum requirements for benefit amounts; federal matching grants augmented whatever payments the states provided.

Within this system well over one thousand different state and local administrative units were created to operate the Old Age Assistance (OAA), Assistance for the Blind (AB), and Assistance to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD) programs—each with different eligibility criteria, different payment systems, and differing benefit amounts. In 1972, for example, a maximum OAA benefit for a couple age sixty-five could be as low as $85 (in several South Carolina jurisdictions) and as high as $414 (in a California county).