What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Do Deceased People Receive Social Security Benefits?
On February 11, ” volunteer information technology consultant ” Elon Musk appeared at an Oval Office event to discuss the findings of the newly created Department of Government Effectiveness. Among other statements, Musk said that a “cursory check of Social Security” showed that people who are clearly dead may be receiving Social Security benefits.
“We have people who are 150 years old,” Musk said. “Do you know anyone who is 150 years old? I don’t know, OK… I think they are probably dead, or in my opinion they must be very famous, one of the two.
In a later post on X, Musk gave some numbers and joked: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires on Social Security.”
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As with many hot-button political issues, almost everyone gets it wrong. Musk doesn’t pull numbers out of his ass; he doesn’t lie about how apparently dead people are listed as alive by Social Security. But he also found no waste or fraud.
Was Musk’s number the result of a misunderstanding of computer programming?
Shortly after Musk’s press conference, there was speculation online that Musk’s “150-year” figure was the result of a misunderstanding of how databases are programmed. They are (probably) wrong. This X post explaining the theory has been viewed over 300,000 times:
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While it would be funny if this were true, it cannot be proven and seems unlikely to me. Musk seemed to pull a “shocking” number out of thin air, but his numbers are roughly in line with previous Social Security checks. There are indeed many records of people born more than 150 years ago who are not listed as deceased in the Social Security database. But that’s not what Musk found, and it’s not a sign of fraud or embezzlement.
Are 150 year olds listed as living by Social Security?
Inach Canabarro Lucas , 116 years old, is the oldest living person. Oldest person ever to live to be 122 years old. But according to a 2023 Social Security Administration audit (a real audit, not a quick scan), 18.9 million people are listed in the database as born before 1920 but have no death information recorded.
According to the Census Bureau, there were only 86,000 people over 100 living in the United States in 2023. But these “maximum reasonable life expectancy holders” (as the government calls them) do not appear to receive Social Security benefits.
What is “death” anyway?
The Numident Social Security database is huge and complex. While Nudent does track deaths, its goal is to “ manage its programs ,” not “a complete report of all deaths in the country.” Ultimately, the database’s “living dead” found themselves in perpetual document limbo because “these people died decades ago—before electronic death reports were used,” or so the independent auditors concluded . This is a paperwork issue that does not necessarily lead to fraud or waste.
Has Elon Musk uncovered widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration?
He didn’t. This is not a smoking gun. Even though there are about 20 million seniors in the country who are the only ones alive on paper, the Social Security Administration pays benefits to about 44,000 people over 100, which is the number of super seniors who actually live in the country, according to the Census. In fact, a 2015 report found 6.5 million active Social Security numbers for people over 112, but only 13 of them were used to claim benefits—it turns out there are much better ways to cheat Social Security than receiving a deceased ancestor’s monthly check for $22.54 , a payment that a 150-year-old person would receive .
Musk ultimately found no fraud or embezzlement. He didn’t reveal anything. He brought this issue to people’s attention, but the point is that Social Security vampires are a clerical problem that we’ve known about for a long time, that has already been solved, and doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
The Truth About Social Security Isn’t Very Sexy
Another Social Security audit (in fact, we do this regularly), published in 2015, found that 6.5 million people in the Numident database were over 112 years of age. Benefits were sent to 266 beneficiaries (most of them were likely under 112, despite what the database says—with documents dating back to the early 20th century, things get confusing).
To be fair, the 2015 audit and the 2023 audit came to roughly the same conclusion as Musk: We should probably fix this. “The lack of death information in Numident and DMF hampers efforts by SSA and across government to prevent and detect fraud and abuse,” the 2023 audit concluded. So why don’t we fix this?
What is “government waste”?
The government doesn’t just check the “yes” box for “Is this person dead?” for people who were born more than 120 years ago because, according to the SSA , adding the words “presumed deceased” to records in the Numident system would be “costly to implement, would provide little benefit to the agency, would largely duplicate information already available to data sharing consumers, and would create costs for states and other data sharing partners.” Contrary to the conclusion Musk and his colleagues have come to, the SSA thinks it would be more wasteful to fix the problem than to just leave it alone: The Treasury Department already includes people over a certain age on its non-pay list anyway, so they’re just letting the files skip the date of death because it’s free.