Social Security benefits play a vital role in reducing poverty in every state, and they lift more Americans above the poverty line than any other program. Without Social Security, 21.7 million more Americans would be poor, according to analysis using the March 2019 Current Population Survey. Although most of those whom Social Security keeps out of poverty are elderly, 6.9 million are under age 65, including 1.2 million children. A recent study that matches Census survey data to administrative records suggests that the official estimates overstate elderly reliance on Social Security but confirmed that Social Security lifts millions of elderly Americans out of poverty and dramatically reduces the elderly poverty rate.