us here, because you have not drawn any distinctions between payments that end up in this country, and therefore work against the problem which you have outlined so well, and those payments which do not end up in the country, and which therefore would have no effect whatsoever on the problems we are discussing. I would be interested in having factual information as to the total dollars and the number of individuals involved, by country.

Mr. COHEN. Yes.

Representative RUMSFELD. I have had instances where individuals who have themselves come to this country and have written me saying that I should do everything possible to prevent others, by specific names, because, these people wrote me, of the fact that that was their intention, and they did not feel it was fair to this country to have these people come in and then return and simply draw their payments. If you are prepared to give those statistics now, I would be happy to have them. If not, I would like them for the record.

Mr. COHEN. I can put them in the record. I might say, Congressman, that the law, in general, provides that a person must have resided in the United States 10 years, if the payment is to be made outside of the United States, or else there must be a reciprocal treaty or agreement between this country and the other country of which he is a citizen.

I have no doubt that there are some people that came to the United States to become entitled to benefits and returned to their native lands. I think the question is should a person who has worked a or y number of years in this country have the right to have eligibility for social security even if he leaves the country.

Obviously there has to be some minimum period, and Congress made it 10 years. I think it is reasonable. But it may well be that experience shows that there should be some other period of time.

Representative RUMSFELD. I think this is a possibility, that the changing picture on balance of payments might very well indicate to the Congress that some amendments to these provisions might be appropriate.

(The following material, relative to the questioning above, was later supplied by the Department for the record:)

Question: What part of SSA payments go abroad and what effect does this have on the balance of payments, particularly those people who may come into this country, work a minimum length of time, and return to their native country to draw benefits?

The

Answer: As of June 30, 1966, there were 175,541 beneficiaries living in foreign countries. The total benefits paid to persons living abroad in fiscal year 1966 was $156,598,000, seven-tenths of one percent of all payments in that year. table below shows the number of beneficiaries in specific countries. A little over one-half (52 percent) of the workers on whose account the claim is being paid are U.S. citizens. A somewhat larger proportion (58 percent) of all benefits paid are based on the work of U.S. citizens, whose benefits are higher on the average than those of non-citizens.

Thus in fiscal year 1966 approximately $65,771,000 went to non-citizens abroad. These beneficiaries were either citizens of countries having treaties with the United States or whose social security systems have been found to provide U.S. citizens comparable treatment under the country's social security system, or persons or the dependents of persons who had worked at least ten years in this country or had been in the active military service of the U.S. According to Department of Commerce figures total government payments abroad involving a dollar outflow in 1966 amounted to $5.3 billion. Total SSA payments abroad to non-citizens ($66.7 million) thus represented only 1.2 percent of total U.S. government expenditures abroad that resulted in a dollar outflow.

1 Based on monthly benefit check address. Data for places with 100 or more beneficiaries shown separately. All benefit payments were being withheld on June 30, 1966, from beneficiaries living in the following countries in which conditions were such that there was no reasonable assurance that the payee would actually receive the check and be able to negotiate it: Albania, China (including Outer Mongolia and Tibet), Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Zone of Germany, Hungary, North Korea, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

Includes wife beneficiaries under age 65 with entitled children in their care, and divorced wives.

Includes disabled persons aged 18 and over whose disability began before age 18 and entitled full-time students aged 18-21.

Includes surviving divorced mothers with entitlted children in their care.

7 Aged 60 and over for widows and surviving divorced wives, and aged 62 and over for widowers.

Source: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social Security Administration, Office of Research and Statistics, Division of Statistics, February 1967.