Was the Social Security Board tight with its money in 2005? A new statistical abstract released by SSB, suggests that to some extent, it was.
In 2005, 104 persons, or 5% of injury claims were not paid due to late claims. How late? Well in 2005, those who got there more than 4 days after the injury were denied. Why? Well it seems it was the enforcement of a standing provision which states that claims which are more than 4 days late have to be reviewed. Reviewed but not necessarily disallowed. However disallowed is just what they were in 2005, 104 of them. Since that time though, the policy has been relaxed.
But the abstract also shows that the fund is quite tight in other areas. The 97 spouses receiving a death benefit are paid just $7.42 a day. The 719 spouses receiving survivors' pension aren't faring much better; they get $152 a month or $5 a day.
And while spouses are doing badly, orphans are doing worse. They get $58 a month, or $1.91 daily. And pensioners don't get much either. In 2005, they got $244.00 a month, or $8.00 a day - just about enough for a plate of food. All this while administrative expenses increased by 7.2% in 2005.
And the decisions that the board makes didn't fare that well either over the 4 years from 2001 to 2005. The real rate of return on SSB investments has fallen from 7.5% in 2001 to 2.7% in 2005. With that, there has been a 1.5 million dollar decline in net investment income between 2004 and 2005.
And while investment income was down, your contributions in 2005 were more than ever, up 7.8% to $50.3 million. That's part of a 4 year trend dating back to 2001 in which your contributions to Social Security have increased by 19 million dollars over four years.
And while contributions are going up, payouts are going down: in 2001 71% of contributions were being paid as a benefits. By 2005 that had tapered off to 62.2%,
In 2005, 71,000 or 72% of the labor force were insured with Social Security. Notably, 78.5% of all contributions come from the Belize and Cayo Districts - home to only 52% of the population.
