Despite record 8.7% COLA by 2023, ‘More work remains to be done to help seniors’
The Social Security Administration announced a historic 8.7 percent COLA increase for benefits in 2023. The extra money each month will help recipients meet inflation to some extent when it comes with payments of January
However, there is concern that more needs to be done, especially for seniors, to make the COLA more responsive to the expenses they incur that are not used in the current calculation.
The current COLA uses inflation figures from the CPI-W, a broad basket of consumer goods and services. There are calls to use the CPI-E which targets goods and services that would “more accurately measure the spending patterns of older people”.
The Senior Citizens League recently reported that since the early 2000s, those on Social Security have lost forty percent of their purchasing power.