In June of 2025, social security beneficiaries throughout America are scheduled to receive a one-time payment of $2,840. This payment is a monthly installment of the Social Security Retirement Benefits Program which aims to assist retired citizens that have paid into the Social Security system during their employment. Payments are reserved for to retirees who are 62 years of age and older and satisfy the criteria set forth.
Criteria and Pre-Requisites
The payment of $2,840 is intended for retired persons who are 62 years of age and older. Furthermore, one of the eligibility criteria includes having a record of employment whereby the retiree paid Social Security taxes and subsequently earned Social Security benefits. This payment is easily accessible to citizens and permanent residents alike, and recognizes the many years of work and taxes unpaid. Benefits for early retirees are available at age 62, but the monthly benefit payment increases for those who wait until full retirement age to receive their benefits.
Scheduled Payment Dates
Each month’s benefit is calculated and set aside on a specific financial date to be available for distribution to eligible members of SSA. Hence payments for June 2025 will be made on different dates for beneficiaries based on their birthdate. Those beneficiaries born from the 1st to the 10th of the month will receive their checks on June 11, those born from the 11th to the 20th will be paid on June 18, and those born from the 21st to the end of the month will receive their checks on June 25.
Increasing Benefits with Age
Keeping the age of 62, the earliest age to claim, the recipient gets a payment of $2,840. If they decide to rest on their benefit until their full retirement age, they will get a monthly benefit of around $4,018. If they decide to postpone even further to age 70, the benefit can increase to $5,108 per month. The structure of benefits in this system is designed to motivate retirees to consider the various options available to them before deciding when to commence their Social Security benefits.
Historical Context of the Social Security Program in the United States
It is critical to first contextualize the significance of Social Security within the historical backdrop of attempts to construct a national social welfare system in the United States of America during the welfare state era. In doing so within the scope of the present chapter, it would help to highlight the issues that stakeholders within the social security system—state, employer, and insured persons—sought to address in building the system. For the sake of clarity and brevity, we frame the issues within the social protection regime, the welfare state system, and the equilibrium of social security governance. We also attempt to illustrate the landscape of social security system stakeholders in America and their interrelations.
The United States did not have the institutional foundational elements of a national social welfare system on the eve of the 1930s Great Depression. Social welfare within this period was administered through a variety of ad-hoc and uncoordinated private and public charitable
endeavours. Rather, unfettered capitalism had given birth to a highly industrialized, market-based economy. The functional integration of this economy was operating within a weakly organized and barely interventionist state framework. Social welfare during this era had devolved on the public, voluntary, and sporadic sector concerning a significant cross-section of the citizenry, capturing the surplus of the working population. The gap of public provisioning and support was organized as a system of welfare, employment, and social security which was a patchwork of relief, insurance and remains of pension schemes.