Four US territories are outside SSI by federal statute as of 2026 — American Samoa has no replacement benefit at all, and the Supreme Court held the exclusion constitutional in 2022

What is happening?

Supplemental Security Income, known as SSI, is the federal cash benefit for aged, blind and disabled people with almost no income and almost no assets, and it does not reach four US territories. The Social Security Advisory Board stated in its 2025 statement on the program that American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are outside SSI, and that a person who spends a full calendar month in any of the four cannot receive the benefit for that month. Residents of the Northern Mariana Islands are inside the program, treated the same as residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Three of the four excluded territories — Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands — receive a federal block grant for Aid to the Aged, Blind, and Disabled instead. American Samoa receives neither.

The replacement is not equivalent in size. As of June 2022 reporting, monthly payments under that block grant in Puerto Rico were 80 dollars in the aged category, 128 dollars for blind recipients and 80 dollars for disabled adults. The federal maximum payment at the same time was 841 dollars a month for an individual and 1,261 dollars for a couple. The federal maximum is adjusted each year for the cost of living and reaches 994 dollars for an individual in 2026 after a 2.8 percent adjustment. The opened sources describe the block grant as a capped statutory amount rather than one that tracks prices, and none of them states the amount of that cap or the year it was fixed.

On 2022-04-21 the Supreme Court decided United States v. Vaello Madero and held that excluding residents of Puerto Rico from SSI does not violate the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. The case arose after the federal government sought to recover payments made to a recipient who had moved from a state to Puerto Rico. The majority opinion treated the fact that residents of Puerto Rico are exempt from most federal income, gift, estate and excise taxes as a rational basis for the different treatment. The sole dissent argued that recipients of this benefit have incomes low enough that they would owe little or no federal income tax wherever they lived, so that the tax rationale does not reach this program.

Whose problem is this?

The body that can change the statutory definition is Congress, and the court that reviewed the exclusion has already said the Constitution does not require that change.

Where does this problem end?

The line that creates this problem is a definition in federal law, not a decision made by any territorial government.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

Needs a new measurementthe target state: no source opened here names an official target. No statute sets a date by which the exclusion ends, no federal agency names a payment level the territories are meant to reach, and the 2025 board statement describes the exclusion without proposing a schedule for ending it. The pending bill would extend the program to the territories, but a bill referred to committee is a proposal and not a target. Estimates published by policy organizations exist and are not substituted here for an official one, because an advocacy estimate is a position rather than a standard the government has set for itself.

How big is it?

435,886 to 455,200 residents of Puerto Rico are estimated to qualify for the federal benefit if it applied there. The lower end rests on a 2018 survey basis and the upper end on a 2020 Census basis, and the two were produced by different organizations using different methods, so the interval is a spread between two estimates rather than a margin of error around one.

The figures above describe Puerto Rico only, so they form a floor for the four excluded territories rather than a total. No source opened here gives an eligible population for Guam or the US Virgin Islands. For American Samoa the only figure available is the total resident population, 49,710 in the 2020 Census, down 10.5 percent from 2010. That is a headcount of everyone on the islands and not an estimate of who would qualify, so it is reported here as a ceiling on the population with no comparable program rather than added into the interval.

Against the estimated eligible population in Puerto Rico, 30,207 people were receiving the block grant benefit as of 2022 reporting, and benefit spending in fiscal year 2017 was 23.7 million dollars. No opened source reconciles the number receiving the replacement benefit with the number estimated to qualify for the federal one, and the two counts rest on different definitions of eligibility.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. The exclusion sits in the definition of where the program applies. The statutory definition places the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Northern Mariana Islands inside and leaves the other four territories outside. A program that is defined by a list of places cannot be extended by the agency that administers it.

2. The replacement is a ceiling, not a schedule. The federal payment is a per-person amount adjusted every year for the cost of living, and it reached 994 dollars for an individual in 2026. The block grant is a fixed federal contribution divided among recipients by the territory, which is why a monthly payment of 80 dollars in Puerto Rico in 2022 sits alongside a federal maximum payment of 841 dollars a month in that same year.

3. The constitutional route has been tried and closed. After the 2022 decision, a challenge on the same equal protection ground no longer has a path through the courts, so the remaining route runs through Congress.

4. Extension bills are referred and expire. Two bills filed in the 117th Congress stayed in committee until the Congress ended. A budget reconciliation bill carrying an extension passed the House in November 2021 and was not taken up by the Senate. A bill with the same purpose was filed again in 2025 and referred to committee.

5. The people affected are counted as an estimate rather than as a caseload. Because the program does not operate in the four territories, there is no application file, no denial rate and no waiting list to measure. The size of the gap has to be modeled from survey data, which is why the two available estimates for Puerto Rico differ by nearly twenty thousand people.

What has been tried?

Two routes have been tried and neither has changed the statute. The judicial route ended in 2022 with a decision that the Constitution permits the exclusion, and the legislative route has produced bills in three Congresses that reached committee and stopped there.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Institutional exemption — the people left out are not people the program failed to reach. They are outside the definition of where the program operates, and no amount of administration can move that line.

That distinction decides which remedies are available. When a benefit is underused, the fixes are outreach, simpler forms, more staff. Here every one of those fixes would land on a program that does not run in the four territories at all. The one remedy that matches the mechanism is an amendment to the statute, and the record shows bills filed in three Congresses that were referred to committee and went no further.

The Northern Mariana Islands sit inside the same program, which shows that the line is a specific statutory list rather than a general rule about territories. The same point runs the other way for the replacement benefit: three of the four excluded territories receive a block grant and the fourth receives nothing, so even the compensating arrangement is a list rather than a principle. No opened source sets out a principle that explains which territories are inside and which are outside, or why one of the four excluded ones has no replacement at all.

The second reason the position holds is that the constitutional route closed in 2022. Until then, a court could have required the change without Congress acting. After the decision, the exclusion stands as a matter the Constitution permits, and the dissent recorded the objection that the tax rationale does not fit a benefit paid to people with almost no taxable income. That objection is on the record and it did not carry.

The third reason is that nothing in the process produces a deadline. A bill that is referred to committee and never reported out leaves no formal denial behind, so each Congress starts from the same position as the last one and the filing of a new bill is indistinguishable, from the outside, from progress. Meanwhile the gap widens by arithmetic rather than by decision, because the federal payment rises with the cost of living every year and the block grant ceiling does not.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) Congress amends the statutory definition so that the four territories are inside the program, with a stated effective date (b) the monthly payment received by aged, blind and disabled residents of the territories reaches the federal schedule (c) the number of people receiving assistance in the territories approaches the number estimated to qualify.

(a) alone is weaker than it looks. An extension can arrive with a phase-in long enough, an eligibility rule narrow enough or an appropriation short enough that the payment on the ground does not move. An extension enacted in one Congress can also be narrowed in a later one, which would turn a solved observation back into an unsolved one without any change in the territories themselves.

(b) alone measures the wrong side of the arithmetic. The federal payment rises every year with the cost of living, so a gap can close because the territory payment rose or because the federal figure was held down. It could also close on paper for a category that few people fall into, which is why the payment for blind recipients being higher than the payment for the aged category in the same territory tells nothing about how many people receive either.

(c) alone counts caseload, not adequacy. Enrolment can rise while the amount per person stays where it was, and the count of people estimated to qualify is itself a model rather than a measurement, with the two available estimates for Puerto Rico differing by nearly twenty thousand people. The three have to be read together, and none of them can be read for Guam or the US Virgin Islands until someone publishes an eligible population for those two territories.

What is it connected to?

Fills with researchthe parallel exclusion from federal food assistance, the wider set of federal programs that treat territories differently, the political status question that sits beside this one, and the treatment of overseas or dependent territories in the social security systems of other countries. Relation type and evidence grade were not established in this round.

What these sources do not say

• The current payment level under the block grant. The most recent figures any opened source gives for Puerto Rico are the June 2022 amounts of 80, 128 and 80 dollars by category. No opened source gives a 2025 or 2026 figure, and none states whether the amounts have changed since.
• The amount of the statutory funding ceiling. Opened secondary sources describe the block grant as capped at a fixed statutory amount set in an earlier fiscal year, and not one of them states what that amount is or names the year. The primary documents that would carry it returned an automated refusal.
• The position in Guam and the US Virgin Islands. No opened source gives a recipient count, a payment level or an estimate of the eligible population for either territory. The opened evidence is concentrated on Puerto Rico, and nothing in it indicates whether the other two figures exist elsewhere.
• Why American Samoa has no block grant. Three of the four excluded territories receive one and American Samoa does not. No opened source explains how that difference arose or when.
• The assumptions behind the cost estimates. The two figures attributed to the SSA Office of the Chief Actuary appear in search result text. Neither memorandum could be opened, and no opened source states whether the estimates account for administrative costs or for people moving between a territory and a state.
• What has happened to the 2025 bill. No opened source reports a hearing, a committee vote or a co-sponsor count for H.R.4814 after its referral on 2025-07-29.
• A current agency position. No source opened here carries a statement from the Social Security Administration responding to the criticism of the exclusion. The reasoning on the public record is the rationale the Supreme Court majority accepted in 2022, which is a court document rather than an agency position, and the dissent in the same case records the objection to it.

See the evidence

No primary federal document on the benefit itself was read in full. The one federal text opened end to end is the introduced version of H.R.4814, which carries its own filing date and committee referral. The 2025 statement of the Social Security Advisory Board, a federal body, was opened directly and is the source for the structure of the exclusion, and the Census Bureau release was opened directly for the American Samoa population. Everything about payment levels comes from opened journalism and professional commentary that cite program figures rather than from a program document, which is why those rows are graded medium. The slip opinion in the 2022 case could not be rendered, so the holding rests on two opened case summaries that agree with each other. Five rows carry no URL because the hosts returned an automated refusal or the file would not render, and no substitute address was put in their place. Where the opened sources disagree the disagreement is left visible: the two estimates of how many Puerto Rico residents would qualify differ by nearly twenty thousand and rest on different survey years, and neither acknowledges the other. This is a research-based definition, so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode: press-derived.

People affected

Estimated range 435,886–455,200 As of 2018 survey basis at the low end and 2020 Census basis at the high end, both reported through 2022

Sensitivity This interval covers Puerto Rico only, so it is a floor for the four excluded territories and not a total. No source opened here gives an estimate of the eligible population in Guam or in the US Virgin Islands, so those two territories add an unknown amount above the high end. For American Samoa the only available figure is the total resident population, 49,710 in the 2020 Census, and it is deliberately not added here: a headcount of everyone living on the islands is a different quantity from an estimate of who would qualify, and adding it would mix the two. The width of the interval is not a confidence interval. It is the distance between two estimates of the same quantity made by different organizations from different base years, and neither of the two opened sources acknowledges the other or states its counting basis. A separate count runs far below both: 30,207 people were receiving the replacement block grant benefit in Puerto Rico as of 2022 reporting, and no opened source reconciles that number with either eligibility estimate or states whether the two rest on the same definition of eligibility. Both endpoints are also older than the document. No opened source updates either estimate past 2022, so population change in the territory since then is unmeasured here.

Regional breakdown No source opened here gives an eligible population for Guam, the US Virgin Islands or American Samoa, so there is nothing to allocate across the four territories. Splitting a combined figure by resident population would be proportional allocation, and it would be wrong in both directions at once here, because the share of residents who are aged, blind or disabled with almost no income differs by territory and because one of the four has no replacement program at all.