United States retirement benefit payments account for much of the income for many families. What’s more, many retirees only get Social Security as a source of income. This makes beneficiaries directly dependent on the monthly retirement check.
However, if we look at the number of United States citizens who get a SSA Retirement check, the data may be surprising to Americans. And that is that as many as 68 million people collected a retirement payment in the past year 2023.
This implies that that number is on the rise, so more and more Americans are collecting one of these benefits. And we’re not just talking about the Social Security Age Retirement Benefit, but also about Disability checks.
This category includes all the checks that the Social Security Administration issues each month regardless of the type of benefit. So the number of Americans who get one of these checks each month is truly enormous.
Number of 65-year-old retirees on Social Security
Similarly, if we consider 65-year-olds, we can see that the number of beneficiaries collecting Social Security is enormous. In total, 9 out of 10 Americans over this age collect a retirement benefit.
The amount of each check does not matter in terms of this, but we are only talking about the number of Americans who get one of these payments. In this regard, other factors must be taken into account.
For those retirees age 65 and older, SSA accounts for approximately 30% of their monthly income. If we talk about figures by gender, 37% of men have retirement as 50% of their income. In the case of women, the retirement check accounts for half of their income for 42% of them.
Likewise, retirees over 65 may also have Social Security as their sole source of income. Or nearly so. For 12% of men and 15% of women, Social Security accounts for 90% of the money they get each month.
This wouldn’t be bad news if every American got a huge Social Security check, but that’s not the case. The maximum retirement payment is $4,873 per month, but it is typical for Americans to get a check around $1,600 per month.