Social Security benefit payouts will hold steady for 2016. This is the third year in ten where inflation resulted in a zero increase. The Labor Department calculates the official annual cost of living was down 0.4%. The decrease was due in large part to gas and energy prices dropping nearly 30% over the past year. A Wall Street Journal article, Social Security Recipients Won’t Get Cost-of-Living Bump in 2016, highlights that over the past 10 years, benefits have increased on average by 2%, half of the average benefit increase rate seen over the past 40 years:
“While [living cost adjustment] has resulted in an average benefit increase of 4.1% over the past 40 years, benefits have gone up an average of just 2% over the past 10 years. There were no increases in 2010 and 2011.”
The Wall Street Journal also published Why Social Security Checks Likely Won’t See a Big Increase in 2017, Either, which included the graph below showing the COLA for Social Security recipients since 1986. The article reports why a meaningful increase in 2017 is unlikely:
