Four funds, not one
Social Security is a set of accounts, and the dates differ because the income and cost profiles differ.
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance pays retirement and survivor benefits. Disability Insurance pays SSDI. Together they are OASDI, and they are sometimes treated as a single combined fund because the law permits reallocation between them. Hospital Insurance is Medicare Part A, funded by the 1.45% payroll tax. Part B and Part D are not trust-fund programs in the same sense: they are financed by premiums and general revenues and are reauthorized annually.
The 2026 report’s central projections are:
| Fund | Reserve depletion | Share of scheduled benefits payable afterward |
|---|---|---|
| OASI | Q4 2032 | 78% |
| DI | None before 2100 | 100% |
| Combined OASDI | Q3 2034 | 83% |
| HI | Q2 2033 | 89% |
What depletion means
Depletion is the moment assets in the fund fall to zero. It is not the moment revenue falls to zero. Payroll taxes continue to arrive every pay period, and those receipts alone cover most of scheduled benefits — 78% for OASI, 83% for the combined program, 89% for HI.
The gap is the part currently covered by redeeming trust fund holdings. Once the holdings are gone, the gap cannot be paid without new legislation, and current law prohibits borrowing. That is why the report frames the outcome as an across-the-board reduction rather than a shutdown, and why a 78% figure is more informative than a headline about a date.
Why the dates move
Each report re-estimates fertility, immigration, mortality, wage growth, and interest rates. Small changes in long-run assumptions shift depletion dates by a year or two in either direction, which is why a date quoted from memory is usually wrong. The 2026 report is the current basis.
Two structural points are stable across reports. The DI fund’s health improved materially after the 2015 reallocation and remains fully financed in the projection period. And the OASI date is earlier than the combined date because the combined figure assumes the funds are pooled.
For planning purposes, the reasonable reading is that benefit levels are a policy variable after the early 2030s, not a certainty. Anyone building a retirement budget around a full scheduled benefit should model a haircut scenario as well.
Another common misreading is that the funds hold cash. They hold special-issue Treasury securities, redeemed as needed to cover the gap between program cost and tax income. Depletion therefore means the holdings are exhausted, not that the Treasury is empty: redemption is limited to what the fund owns. That accounting detail is why the trustees can quote a precise payable percentage rather than a binary date.
The report also publishes low-cost and high-cost alternatives around the central estimate. Under favorable assumptions the OASI date moves later; under adverse ones it moves earlier. The intermediate projection is the figure cited in policy debate, and it is the one to plan against. Legislative changes made after publication do not appear until the next report.