Does Social Security have a dead beneficiary problem after all?
Leaked SSA figures, intended to debunk DOGE, show 18% of age 100+ beneficiaries are, well, dead.
It’s familiar by now: Elon Musk highlighted the millions of Social Security numbers that are assigned to people born one hundred or more years ago, the vast majority of whom cannot still be alive. The implication was that Social Security is paying out benefits to dead people. Musk said “This might be the biggest fraud of all time.” President Trump, citing Musk’s figures, said “If you take all those millions of people off of Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security.”
Look, they’re just wrong about that: due to limitations in the Social Security Administration’s archaic databases, many Social Security numbers assigned to individuals born a century or more ago haven’t been deactivated. But that doesn’t mean they’re receiving benefits.
But still, how many dead people actually are receiving benefits? My guess, as someone who worked at SSA, would be the true number of dead beneficiaries is miniscule relative to the total. When I was at the agency, it was a topic of conversation if we found someone had DIY’d grandma’s funeral to continue collecting benefits.
But some SSA data, leaked by the agency to the Washington Post for the purpose of debunking Musk’s claims, tell a much more worrying story. Here’s the quote, from Post reporters Hannah Natanson and Todd Frankel:
“Last month, agency staff members again looked into the issue. They found 1,294 Americans older than 100 who were receiving benefits from Social Security as of Feb. 19, according to internal agency records obtained by The Washington Post. Workers contacted 1,107 of these centenarians as of last month, the records show, finding that 905 were alive and 202 were dead. That meant 202 dead people appeared to be improperly collecting benefits, not 20 million.”
Seemingly, this ends the issue: 202 dead beneficiaries in a country of 350 million people isn’t the end of the world.
But I think the Post’s reporters misunderstood what SSA was doing. While the SSA examined 1,107 beneficiaries over the age of 100, that isn’t the total number of very-old Social Security recipients. As of December 2024, there were 89,106 retired worker beneficiaries aged 99 and over. Restricting to individuals aged 100 and over would reduce this number slightly, while including other beneficiaries – such as spouses or widows receiving benefits based solely on their spouse’s earnings – would increase the number. But, lacking better information, let’s use a figure of 89,000.
In other words, SSA appears to have looked at a sample of very-old beneficiaries, not the total population. That’s reasonable, since confirming life or death is labor-intensive. But, in that case, the relevant figure isn’t 202, the number of dead beneficiaries SSA found.
It’s 18.2 percent, which is the percentage of age 100+ beneficiaries SSA examined that turned out to be dead.
If that percentage turns out to be true – and, again, I’m having a hard time believing it – then SSA has a real problem on its hands. These figures would imply that over 16,000 dead Americans aged 100+ are currently collecting benefits. At an average monthly amount of about $1,776, according to SSA’s publicly-available data, that’s real money – about $340 million in lost benefits per year. Again, not the end of the world in a $1.6 trillion dollar annual Social Security benefit bill, but this may not be the end of the story.
What if the dead beneficiary problem weren’t restricted to individuals aged 100 and over. Why not a person who died at age 85, but whose death wasn’t reported to SSA? Presumably the dead-beneficiary rate would be much lower, but there also are a lot more Americans in this age group. You can see where this is going, and the numbers are potentially large. (Potentially.)
Again, the SSA figures the Post cited weren’t published publicly, so we can’t be sure. Also again, I almost can’t believe the SSA figures the Post cited. SSA has systems designed to catch the dead-beneficiary issue, meaning that the 18% of dead beneficiaries SSA staff found had bypassed these checks. And, even worst-case, these aren’t Musk-level problems.
But, if it really is true that 18% of aged 100+ Social Security beneficiaries actually are dead, somebody needs to check into this. Like, pronto.
When my father died, my last remaining parent, I had to end his social security payments. It took me several months, and I received three or four payments I did not want to receive, but I could find no way to return them. And no one willing to interest themselves in that problem.
When discussing this with my wife last night, I remembered that I had to close the account that these checks were coming to, because I could not stop them any other way. I did not want to close the account, as there were still some things in there that needed attention, but it was the only solution I could imagine. So, look how hard I worked to not commit fraud. How easy, and logical, and plausible it would have been to just let the checks continue coming.
What I see not discussed is Soc. Sec ## given to foreigners temporarily in the US. And US citizens who become permanent expats.
Students, legal non-immigrant workers, are issued these ##. Many of them return to their home country and their # stays active. Some of them can apply for limited old-age benefits (based on their contribution) later in life. Do all their families report the death of this beneficiary to the US government ?
The SSA requires for benefits paid outside of the US "proof of life". If this is not given, benefits are stopped. Maybe this document is in some countries easier to fake than in others. Are audits done on benefits sent to foreigners/US expats?
In the US funeral homes report the deceased's info to the SSA. How many people here keep a dead close relative sitting in their chair a la Norman Bates ? More than Hitchcock thought possible?
I also do not know if benefits are maybe paid under the name of a dead male to a vey much alive female surviving wife?
This story needs a lot more facts & figures to make sense.