Supplemental Security Income for children with disabilities

Did you know that Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash payments to children with disabilities whose families have limited income and resources?

A child must meet all of the following disability requirements to be considered medically eligible for SSI:

• The child, if not blind, generally must not be working or earning more than $1550 a month in 2024.

• If the child is blind, they must not be working or earning more than $2590 in 2024. The earning amounts usually change every year to keep up with inflation.

The child must have a medical condition(s), that result in “marked and severe functional limitations.” This means that the condition(s) must very seriously limit the child’s activities.

The child’s condition(s) must be expected to last for at least a year or result in death.

Some teens may have part-time jobs or be involved in work programs, which may affect their eligibility for SSI. In addition, if an unmarried child under age 18 is living at home with one or both parents, we will consider some of the parents’ income as the child’s income.

We make allowances for the parents and their other children living in the home when we consider the parents’ income. You can learn more about children’s benefits in our publication, Benefits for Children with Disabilities at http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10026.pdf.

We also help children – and adults – through our Compassionate Allowances program. Compassionate Allowances are a way to quickly identify conditions that, by definition, meet our standard for disability benefits. You can read the list of conditions at http://www.ssa.gov/compassionateallowances/conditions.htm.

Compassionate Allowances can help reduce the time it takes for us to make a disability determination for applicants with the most serious disabilities. Thousands of children receive benefits because they have a condition on this list, but children with conditions not on this list can still qualify for SSI.

If you are or know a parent, guardian, caregiver, or representative of a child who may be eligible for SSI, visit our Disability Benefits webpage - Apply for a Child (Under Age 18) at http://www.ssa.gov/ssi to learn more.