The Senior Citizen’s League’s (TSCL) model of estimating the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for retirees points to a 2.8 percent increase. TSCL’s 2027 COLA estimate is slightly above last month’s estimate, and is the same as the 2026 COLA.
“The projected 2027 COLA will surely leave seniors dissatisfied and frustrated,” TSCL Executive Director Shannon Benton said. ” The reality is most older Americans constantly tell us they believe the CPI-W, the measure used to calculate the COLA, underestimates inflation as they see it. Affordability is the popular word around town right now, even among other groups, because most Americans believe inflation is higher than the government claims.”
SEE ALSO: Guide to Federal Retiree COLAs: What Are They and How Are They Calculated?
TSCL’s research shows that 57.6 percent of America’s 55.8 million seniors have forgone at least one healthcare product or service to cut costs in the last 12 months. The top medical services that seniors skip to trim their budgets are dental (42.3 percent), vision (28.8 percent), and hearing( 19.6 percent).
According to TSCL, only 18.9 percent of financially healthy seniors, who live comfortably with enough savings to provide adequate income for their whole retirement, had skipped a medical product or service. That figure rises to 78.7 percent among the financially at risk, whose incomes do not cover essentials.
“Medicare treats dental, vision, and hearing insurance like extras or add-ons for American seniors, but access to these services is essential. Regular, preventive dental care can save you thousands of dollars in the long run, so, as a society, allowing cost to remain a barrier makes no sense. Vision and hearing loss also have meaningful connections to cognitive decline, meaning lack of access to this coverage progressively sabotages quality of life for countless seniors.
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Each month, TSCL issues a new prediction of the next COLA for Social Security using our statistical model. “Our model incorporates the Consumer Price Index, the Federal Reserve interest rate, and the national unemployment rate to make its predictions,” TSCL says.
TSCL is calling on Congress to adopt the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) — advocating that it’s a more fair measure that would protect retirees’ buying power.
The official 2027 COLA will be released by the Social Security Administration (SSA) in mid-October 2026. The SSA will calculate the percent change between average prices in the third quarter of the current year (ending on Sept. 30) with the third quarter of the previous year.