Mountain State Times

There were 40,741 OASDI widow and parent beneficiaries in West Virginia in 2019, ranking it 31st in the United States, according to the official Social Security Administration website.

The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) is a program of the Social Security Administration funded primarily through payroll taxes. It was signed into law in 1935 by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The OASDI program aims to supplement a worker’s lost wages due to retirement, disability or death of a spouse.

The following table shows states ranked by number of widow and parent beneficiaries.

Rank	State	Number of Widow and Parent Beneficiaries
1	California	362,897
2	Texas	315,685
3	Florida	268,798
4	New York	207,475
5	Pennsylvania	182,826
6	Ohio	175,757
7	Illinois	144,255
8	Michigan	139,023
9	North Carolina	116,547
10	Georgia	113,210
11	Tennessee	93,854
12	Virginia	92,892
13	New Jersey	92,329
14	Indiana	86,843
15	Louisiana	82,951
16	Missouri	80,272
17	Alabama	78,529
18	Arizona	78,367
19	Washington	75,223
20	Kentucky	74,232
21	Wisconsin	67,451
22	South Carolina	67,311
23	Massachusetts	66,711
24	Maryland	56,217
25	Oklahoma	55,112
26	Minnesota	55,062
27	Colorado	50,543
28	Oregon	49,521
29	Mississippi	45,927
30	Arkansas	44,711
31	West Virginia	40,741
32	Iowa	40,268
33	Connecticut	36,513
34	Kansas	33,589
35	Nevada	29,071
36	New Mexico	26,733
37	Utah	23,543
38	Nebraska	21,072
39	Idaho	19,805
40	Maine	19,192
41	New Hampshire	14,720
42	Hawaii	14,570
43	Montana	13,927
44	Delaware	11,744
45	Rhode Island	11,154
46	South Dakota	10,859
47	North Dakota	9,758
48	Vermont	7,811
49	Wyoming	6,690
50	Alaska	5,442
51	District of Columbia	3,965