Millions of Dead People on Social Security? The Agency’s Own Data Says Otherwise.

As the Department of Government Efficiency has pursued access to sensitive personal information held by the Social Security Administration, Elon Musk and President Trump have said they suspect tens of millions of dead people may be receiving fraudulent payments from the government.

The claim, which would presumably require living people to ultimately cash those checks, is rooted in an arcane problem: Among the more than 500 million unique Social Security numbers the agency has ever issued, there are millions of people in its records who were born more than a century ago but who have no recorded deaths.

That nettlesome issue, however, is largely unrelated to the question of who receives Social Security checks today. The agency publishes public data about those beneficiaries, including by age. And there simply aren’t tens of millions of people receiving retirement checks who appear over the age of 100. There are at most 90,000 of them:

And according to the Census Bureau, there are about 85,000 people in America 100 or older.

The above chart covers nearly 52 million Americans receiving retired worker benefits in December 2024. These are the people who paid into the Social Security system over their working lives, and who now collect what most people think of as “Social Security.” The Social Security Administration makes a smaller number of payments to dependents and widowed survivors of those retirees, and to disabled workers and their dependents under a different trust fund. The total number of people receiving benefits last year was about 68 million.

The table Mr. Musk shared on social media over the weekend showed about 20 million people in the agency’s database over the age of 100 and with no known death, including 3.5 million people in their 120s, and 1.3 million people in their 150s. The numbers he mentioned appeared to be from a system called the Numident, the Rosetta Stone-like computer database that contains basic information on every Social Security number ever issued. It covers a far larger universe of people than all Americans currently receiving Social Security checks.

The S.S.A. has also already concluded that the group of Americans receiving payments contains few people who should probably be considered dead.