In Inyo County, 7.8 Percent of All Income Comes From Social Security

 

By Bill Bishop and Roberto Gallardo

The Daily Yonder

 

If Inyo County residents didn’t receive their monthly payments from the Social Security Administration, 7.8 percent of total personal income in the county would be lost, a total of $51,844,531 in 2009.

 

Inyo County is more dependent on Social Security payments than is the rest of the country. Nationally, 5.5 percent of total personal income in 2009 came from Social Security payments. In California, 4.0 percent of all income comes from these payments.

 

In Inyo County, 4,125 people receive some form of Social Security payment, either an old age pension, a survivor benefit or a disability check, according to the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Social Security beneficiaries represent 23.9 percent of the total county population.

 

In rural counties and counties such as Inyo with smaller cities, Social Security payments constitute a much larger chunk of the local economy than in urban areas. A greater percentage of people in rural America receive these payments than in urban counties, and so rural counties have higher average payments per resident.

 

“In many rural places, Social Security is a very critical element of the local economic base,” said Peter Nelson, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It’s less important to a place like Los Angeles because there is so much additional economic activity going on there.”

 

Total Social Security payments in Inyo County amounted to $2,998 per person in 2009. The national average was $2,199 per person and in California it was $1,704.

 

Social Security payments in Inyo County have been changing as a proportion of total income. These payments amounted to 5.0 percent of total income in 1970, 6.9 percent in 1980, 8.0 percent in 1990, 8.0 percent in 2000 and 7.8 percent in 2009.

 

Social Security payments are particularly important to rural counties and small cities because the money is largely spent in the community. “The seniors who get these payments are primarily going to spend their money locally,” said Mark Partridge, a rural economist at Ohio State University. “And they are a key reason why some communities are still viable.  If this money dried up, there wouldn’t be a lot of these small towns.”

 

Social Security payments amount to 5 percent of the total income in urban counties. In counties with small cities, such as Inyo County, these payments amount to 8.2 percent of total income, and in rural counties, Social Security totals 9.3 percent of all personal income. More than one out of five Americans living in small cities and rural counties received some kind of Social Security check in 2009.

 

Judith Stallmann, an economist at the University of Missouri, explained that Social Security payments help generate the sales that keep a rural business afloat.

 

“We find that Social Security income can be the difference between success and failure for some local businesses,” Stallmann said. “If you took away, say, 10 percent of the demand, would that local business be able to remain open? Often it’s that 10 percent that keeps them going. Social Security is providing that margin.”

 

Social Security payments go to those over the age of 62 who have filed for benefits, to survivors of insured workers and to those with disabilities. The program is mainly funded by payroll taxes. In Inyo County, 76.4 percent of recipients were retirees in 2009, 10.5 percent were survivors and 13.1 percent were disabled.

 

Changes to Social Security are being discussed in Congress, which is looking for ways to balance the larger federal budget. If benefits are cut — or if the eligibility age is increased — rural counties and small cities would be disproportionately affected, according to Peter Nelson.

 

“Cuts would have a bigger negative impact on rural places, absolutely,” Middlebury’s Professor Nelson said. “They are more dependent on Social Security.”

 

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OPTIONAL TABLE

 

Local Social Security Income

	Per capita income from Social Security	Percent of all income from Social Security
Inyo County	$2,998	7.8
California	$1,704	4.0
Nation	$2,199	5.5

Source: Bureau for Economic Analysis and the Social Security Administration.

 

 

 

About the Authors

Bill Bishop is co-editor of The Daily Yonder (http://www.dailyyonder.com/), an online publication covering rural America, published by the Center for Rural Strategies (http://www.ruralstrategies.org/). He has owned a weekly newspaper in rural Texas and he has worked for newspapers in Texas and Kentucky. Dr. Roberto Gallardo is a research associate with the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University (http://srdc.msstate.edu/). This study was made possible with a grant from the National Academy of Social Insurance.

 

Research Note

Data included in this story comes from the federal Bureau for Economic Analysis and the Social Security Administration. The figures in this story are from 2009, unless otherwise noted. You can see and download charts for publication, a national map and data for every county in your state and the nation from the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University: http://srdc.msstate.edu/socialsecurity/.