Social Security 2.8 Percent Boost Lags Behind Costs, Senior Citizens League Says

The group proposed a one-time $1,400 'Senior Stimulus' payment to Social Security beneficiaries to help offset years of lost purchasing power.

Kelly McBride Ni

Published: 11/5/2025, 4:55:33 PM EST

Social Security 2.8 Percent Boost Lags Behind Costs, Senior Citizens League Says — A Social Security Administration (SSA) office in Washington on March 26, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Social Security benefits will rise 2.8 percent in 2026, but advocacy groups and recent surveys warn that this increase still falls short for older Americans who depend on these benefits and can’t keep up with rising living costs.

According to the Social Security Administration, the 2.8 percent adjustment will increase the average monthly benefit by approximately $56—from $2,008 to $ 2,064—in 2026. While this is 0.3 percentage points above the 2025 adjustment, it remains close to the historical average since automatic COLAs began in 1975.

The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), one of the nation’s largest nonpartisan organizations representing older Americans, is specifically asking Congress to overhaul the formula used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) and has launched a petition to change the formula.

“The 2026 COLA is going to hurt for seniors. Year after year, they warn that Social Security’s meager increases won’t be enough, and the Census Bureau estimates that about 10 percent of retirement-age Americans live in poverty. However, our research suggests that the number may be higher,” said Shannon Benton, the group’s executive director, in a press release. “It’s about time our elected representatives show up for seniors, or else seniors won’t show up for them at the voting booth.”

The group is specifically asking Congress to: “take immediate action to strengthen COLAs to ensure Americans can retire with dignity, such as instituting a minimum COLA of 3 percent and changing the COLA calculation from the CPI-W to the CPI-E,” said Benton.

Currently, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are calculated using the CPI-W, which stands for Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. It tracks prices for households with at least one wage-earning or clerical worker, as well as for the broader urban population. This formula tends to underestimate the costs seniors face, particularly for health care and housing, according to the TSCL.

However, the CPI-E is the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, which the TSCL recommends is designed to measure inflation for Americans aged 62 and older, reflecting spending patterns that include higher costs for health care and housing. TSCL notes that the CPI-E produces a higher COLA about 69 percent of the time, meaning retirees could see larger annual benefit increases that more closely match their actual living expenses.

The group also proposed a one-time $1,400 “Senior Stimulus” payment to Social Security beneficiaries to help offset years of lost purchasing power. Benton wrote that the payment could be distributed through the Social Security Administration in a manner similar to COVID-19 economic relief programs.

“Annual costs for Medicare Part B premiums went up by about $485 between 2020 and 2025, wiping out most of the cost-of-living adjustments,” Benton said.

According to a recent American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) survey, only 22 percent of Americans age 50 and older agree that “a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) of right around 3 percent for Social Security recipients is enough to keep up with rising prices,” while 77 percent disagree. Nearly 72 percent of respondents said an increase of 5 percent or higher would be necessary to keep pace with costs, according to the AARP survey.

According to a 2025 TSCL survey, 73 percent of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their income, and 39 percent depend on it entirely to cover housing, food, and health care costs.