The database includes millions of Americans who are probably dead but who have no death records. But they generally don’t collect checks, as Musk and Trump suggest.According to The New York Times, as the Department of Government Efficiency has been trying to access sensitive personal information from the Social Security Administration, both Elon Musk and President Trump have expressed concerns that millions of deceased individuals may be receiving fraudulent payments from the government. However, this claim is based on a relatively obscure issue: the fact that there are millions of people in the agency’s records who were born over a century ago but have no recorded deaths.
This issue, however, is not directly related to the current recipients of Social Security checks. The agency publicly publishes data on these beneficiaries, including their age, and there are not tens of millions of people receiving retirement benefits who are over the age of 100. In fact, there are only about 90,000 of them, according to the Census Bureau’s data on Americans aged 100 or older.
The chart shared by Mr. Musk on social media over the weekend showed over 20 million people in the agency’s database who are over the age of 100 and have no recorded death, including millions of people in their 120s and 150s. However, this data is from a larger database called the Numident, which contains information on every Social Security number ever issued, not just current recipients of benefits.
The Social Security Administration has already determined that there are very few deceased individuals receiving payments, and the total number of people receiving benefits last year was about 68 million. The agency also makes payments to dependents, widowed survivors, and disabled workers and their dependents, but this is a smaller number compared to retired workers.
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