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Spending Analyses:
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What is the spending on Social Security?
In FY 2025 the federal government spent $1,550 billion on Social Security.
Social Security Spending Analysis
This page shows the current trends in Social Security spending on the OASI and DI programs. There are also charts on OASI and DI spending history. See here for a general history of entitlement spending. See here for spending forecast from latest OASDI Trustees Report.
Recent Social Security Spending
Spending Analyses:
Debt, Deficit Analyses:
Numbers — Charts:
US Social Security Spending Since 1935
Social Security benefits cost about 5 percent of GDP each year.
Social Security Program Growth
Chart S.13f: Social Security Spending since 1935
Social Security, the federal old-age pension program, was passed in 1935 in time for the 1936 presidential election. The first old-age benefits were distributed in 1938.
Social Security benefits were modest in the early years and did not exceed one percent of GDP until 1955. But the program cost increased rapidly, reaching 2.2 percent of GDP in 1960.
Benefit increase slowed somewhat in the 1960s, reaching 3.2 percent in 1971. Costs increased again in the early 1970s before peaking at 4.81 percent in 1983.
Social Security benefits as a percent of GDP slowly declined for the rest of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s down to a low of 4.0 percent of GDP in 2005. But the Great Recession o 2007-09 bumped Social Security up to 4.72 percent of GDP in 2010. Social Security spending has been just under 5 percent GDP since 2013. In 2025 Social Security spending was 5.28 percent GDP.
Social Security Disability Insurance Growth
Chart S.14f: Social Security Spending
The Social Security Disability Insurance Program was enacted in the 1950s and payments began in 1958. Eligibility requirements relaxed in the 1980s.
Starting from zero in 1957 Social Security’s Disability Insurance program reached 0.5 percent of GDP in 1975.
Peaking at 0.55 percent of GDP in the early 1980s, payments declined to a low of 0.43 percent in 1990. But then payments increased, breaching 0.5 percent of GDP in 1993 and 0.6 percent of GDP in 2002. DI reached 0.7 percent of GDP in 2006 and peaked at 0.85 percent of GDP in 2011-13. In 2025 DI was 0.56 percent GDP.
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Spending Data Sources
Spending data is from official government sources.
- Federal spending data since 1962 comes from the president’s budget.
- All other spending data comes from the US Census Bureau.
Gross Domestic Product data comes from US Bureau of Economic Analysis and measuringworth.com.
Detailed table of spending data sources here.
Medicare breakdown here; Medicaid breakdown here.
Federal spending data begins in 1792.
State and local spending data begins in 1820.
State and local spending data for individual states begins in 1957.
Gross Federal Debt
| Debt Now: | $38,380,536,147,996.03 | Debt 2/2020: | $23,409,959,150,243.63 |
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Data Sources for 2021_2029:
Sources for 2021:
GDP, GO: GDP, GO Sources
Federal: Fed. Budget: Hist. Tables 3.2, 5.1, 7.1
State and Local: State and Local Gov. Finances
'Guesstimated' by projecting the latest change in reported spending forward to future years
Sources for 2029:
GDP, GO: GDP, GO Sources
Federal: Fed. Budget: Hist. Tables 3.2, 5.1, 7.1
State and Local: State and Local Gov. Finances
'Guesstimated' by projecting the latest change in reported spending forward to future years
> data sources for other years
> data update schedule.
Blog
Medicaid Update for FY2024
On January 14, 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published its annual report on National Health Expenditures and its NHE Tables includes data on Medicaid from 1960 to 2023. On January 15, 2026, usgovernmentspending.com updated its Medicaid data.
| Item | 2024 Estimate | 2024 Actual |
| Federal Medicaid | $567.2 bn | $567.2 bn |
| State Medicaid (net) | $124.4 bn | $253.2 bn |
| Total Medicaid | $691.6 bn | $820.4 bn |
The federal Medicaid number comes from the Federal Budget Subfunction 558: Grants to states for Medicaid. The state contribution comes from the NHE Tables.
usgovernmentspending.com publishes "guesstimates" of state and local spending from the latest year published by the Census Bureau (currently FY 2023) to the last year in the Historical Tables of the federal budget. (currently 2029 from the FY25 budget). So we have developed "guesstimates" of Medicaid spending going out to 2029, assuming that the overall Medicaid spending increases at the same rate as the federal "Grants to States for Medicaid" increases.
National Health Expenditure data is updated each year in mid December.
On March 27, 2025 the Congressional Budget Office released its annual Long Term Budget Outlook for 2025, which projects federal spendin ...
On November 22, 2025 usgovernmentspending.com updated FY2025 state revenue with quarterly tax data released by the US Ce ...
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Budget News
President’s FY 2025 Budget Release Scheduled for March 11
Although the FY 2024 appropriations process is not yet resolved
Biden to Release Budget March 9
will press McCarthy On Default Risk - Bloomberg
Biden to Release 2023 Budget Request on March 28
how the administration expects to spend money for priorities including aid to Ukraine and the continuing effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic, as well as legislative proposals such as increased funding for community policing programs, cancer research, and mental health education.
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