WASHINGTON — The newly appointed head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) clarified on Wednesday that deceased individuals who are over 100 years old are “not necessarily receiving benefits.” This statement comes in response to inappropriate assertions made by former President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk regarding the agency allegedly issuing payments to millions of individuals well over a century old.
Lee Dudek, the acting commissioner of the SSA appointed by Trump, made this clarification after both Trump and Musk claimed on social media and during public statements that numerous people over 100, 200, and even 300 years old were receiving Social Security payouts incorrectly. While improper payments have indeed occurred, including some to deceased individuals, the figures proposed by Trump and Musk have been exaggerated and mischaracterize the data from the Social Security Administration.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Trump claimed that “millions and millions of people over 100 years old” are receiving Social Security benefits, labeling these disbursements as fraudulent. He stated, “If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden, we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old.” Trump also mentioned an individual in the system allegedly recorded as 360 years old.
Musk, leading efforts against governmental inefficiencies, posted on his social media platform X, expressing concerns about the systemic issues within the SSA. His comments included humorous suggestions about potential vampires collecting Social Security and a serious remark on the discrepancies in the SSA database regarding individuals marked as “ALIVE” when, in fact, they were deceased for quite some time.
In reality, there are not tens of millions of people over 100 years old receiving benefits from the SSA. The confusion partly stems from the organization’s software, which is based on the COBOL programming language and lacks advanced date type functionalities. Consequently, entries with missing or incomplete birthdates revert to a default reference date that goes back over 150 years.
Further investigation by the SSA’s inspector general earlier this year revealed that although there were about 18.9 million Social Security numbers belonging to persons born in 1920 or earlier who were not denoted as deceased, it did not imply that these individuals were actually receiving benefits. The agency opted not to upgrade its database for cost reasons, estimating that such an update would exceed $9 million. A report from July 2023 confirmed that “almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.” Additionally, the agency has policies in place to automatically halt payments to anyone over 115 years old since September 2015.
Dudek, recently appointed as acting head of the SSA after Michelle King’s resignation, emphasized the agency’s dedication to transparency in a news release. He noted that the confusion surrounding these age-related benefits stems from the default database settings. Dudek stated, “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.” He expressed confidence in the agency’s ability to serve the American populace effectively.
As for the issue of Social Security fraud, the inspector general’s report from July 2024 indicated that between 2015 and 2022, the SSA disbursed nearly $8.6 trillion in benefits, with only $71.8 billion classified as improper payments, accounting for less than 1%. Most improper payments involved overpayments to living beneficiaries rather than the deceased.
In early January, the U.S. Treasury managed to recover over $31 million in various federal payments wrongly awarded to deceased individuals, describing it merely as “the tip of the iceberg.” The Treasury had temporary access to the SSA’s “Full Death Master File,” enabling the identification and recovery of these erroneous payments. They anticipate recovering over $215 million during this three-year access period, which commenced in December 2023.
Experts have expressed concerns about the misinformation surrounding Social Security payments. Chuck Blahous from the Mercatus Center responded positively to Musk’s intentions of eliminating waste and improper payments, but cautioned that Social Security should not be perceived as the primary area plagued by high error rates. Instead, he noted that Medicaid has experienced more significant issues in this regard.
Sita Nataraj Slavov, a professor of public policy, warned that misconceptions propagated by Musk and Trump might lead people to believe there are simple solutions to Social Security’s financial challenges, which could misguide decision-making regarding taxes and benefits.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt reiterated insights from the SSA’s inspector general report, noting efforts to uncover further waste and inefficiencies that could undermine taxpayer trust. “The Social Security Administration is now working to find even more waste, fraud, and abuse in the Administration’s whole-of-government effort to protect American taxpayers,” she stated.
