Social Security Administration (SSA) Developer Support
Application Programming Interface (API) for
OASDI Beneficiaries by State
Background
In May 2013, the White House passed Executive Order 13642, Making Open and Machine Readable data the New Default for Government Information. Implementation information is in OMB Memorandum M-13-13 Open Data Policy - Managing Information as an Asset. We continue to advance open data by making data available in multiple formats to respond to customer needs. For example, we released code and tool instructions to help users sort over 1500 assets in our enterprise data inventory. We have also used geospatial aspects of public data for mapping, with tools that also provide JSON and application programming interfaces (API).
Description
The OASDI Beneficiaries by State API is a web service that provides yearly data, by state, for the Social Security beneficiary population - people receiving Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) benefits.
API users can download the entire data asset, or query (call), the asset for selected return of data. Choices include basic program data on the number and type of beneficiaries in each state, as well as the numbers of men and women aged 65 or older receiving benefits. Social Security has the 2015 OASDI Beneficiaries and Benefits by State dataset with a map publicly available. The Digital Government Strategy webpage also shows our APIs.
Functionality
We used the Esri ArcGIS Online platform to provide the data as a RESTful API (also called Feature Service). Click the "API Endpoint" below to review data fields and to start using the API. There is an "API reference" at the top right corner of each page for additional information about using this service. If users want a machine-readable return, the tool will deliver a file in JSON format.
Sample API Call and Response
Get OASDI Beneficiaries by State data for the State of Illinois (the response data is at the bottom of the page).
This link points to a sample call made using the Esri REST interface for obtaining a response in HTML format. In the sample call, we provided a text input for the fields - "Where", "Out Fields", and "Format". In this example, we selected all information for the state of Illinois. To learn more about querying the Feature Service, read ArcGIS Rest API - Query Feature Service.
