From a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:
… The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program provides benefits to wage earners and eligible family members in the event a wage earner retires, becomes disabled, or dies. Child benefits under this program include benefits for minor children, students, and disabled adult children.
SSA initially processes most disability claims through local SSA field offices and state disability determination services that make disability determinations for SSA.
We reviewed a random sample of 100 claims from a population of 5,237 child’s insurance benefits claims that were filed from January 2023 through November 2025 that SSA initially denied because it determined the claimants were not disabled.
Of the 100 initial claims we reviewed, SSA correctly denied 49 for child’s insurance benefits based on medical eligibility requirements. When SSA subsequently approved the 49 claims, it correctly paid the claimants. However, SSA did not correctly deny, pay, and/or document decisions for the remaining 51 claims.
SSA employees incorrectly denied 11 claims. Based on our sample, we estimate the Agency incorrectly denied about 600 claims.
SSA employees did not document whether they completed all required actions when they requested required forms orevidence from the claimants before they denied eight claims. Based on our sample, we estimate this occurred in about 450 claims.
SSA employees did not correctly pay benefits to 32 claimants after they subsequently found the claimants were disabled and approved their claims. Based on our sample, after SSA approved the claims, we estimate employees did not correctly pay about 1,100 claimants, resulting in underpayments of approximately $1.2 million. Additionally, based on our sample, we estimate SSA employees properly paid about 340 claimants; however, the Agency did not establish the correct dates they were entitled to Medicare benefits.
We could not determine why employees made these errors.
