150-year-olds don’t get social security – This is a better task for Doge – Retirement Research Center

Widely fraudulent claims do not hold water.

In a recent Oval Office briefing, Elon Musk provided journalists with examples of fraud, waste and abuse he allegedly found at the Social Security Agency.

His search of the institution’s database has already occupied millions of people over the age of 150. His obvious reason was that these people were of course dead, and therefore, a lot of fraud occurred by paying benefits to the deceased.

To add to his story, Musk then shared his numbers on the social media platform X, which he owns. Indeed, his slaves discovered that there were about 100 years old, probably all of whom died and received benefits.

The Social Security Database includes all individuals who pay or receive benefits. It makes sense to have a complete record of the historical activities of the program. Musk’s team asked the machine to scan the database and determine all the death dates associated with the record, and the query purified the numbers shared by Musk.

Two issues are important here. First, it is no surprise that musk population exceeds the U.S. population (see Figure 1). Indeed, more than a decade ago, the agency’s inspector general’s 2015 audit report determined that the lack of death data was a problem that should be addressed. However, given the manpower required to repair historical records and the limited social security budget, the agency decided to focus on improving the systems of current and future workers rather than completing historical documents. So while it would be nice if each record had a date of death, many records didn’t.

Secondly, just because records of older people who do not have a date of death exist, does not mean that these deceased are accepting checks. Two evidence supports the debate. Most importantly, the number of checks for retirement and disability benefits is exactly what people expect. For example, these populations over the age of 65 are 59 million, while retired workers have cheques of 56 million for their spouses and widows/widows (see Figure 2). If the checks are also made to 21 million dead, the total payments will be much more than the population over the age of 65.

On a smaller level, the 2015 Inspector General’s report noted that while inspectors found that millions of people in the system might have died, they found only 13 checks that could be used to beneficiaries who may be over 112 years old. In fact, a few people did live to that era.

Of course, any organization that pays $1.4 trillion annually to retirees and people with disabilities and their families will inevitably make mistakes. The Social Security Advisory Committee is a group of outside experts who regularly publish recommendations to improve the accuracy of system payments, such as having the Ministry of Finance collect data on deaths.

However, it is important to keep in mind the magnitude of social security errors. According to the Inspector General’s report in July 2024, improper payments from the Social Security Agency account for less than 1% of total payments between 2015 and 2022. Apparently, the error rate is lower than that of any private insurance company.

All in all, the Social Security Agency is not perfect – it makes some payment mistakes and has no date of death on some of its old records. Due to the lack of a death date, I was not surprised that the Musk team found records of many beneficiaries over the age of 100. But these records show no signs of waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, those who would think they should receive the check are those who get it, and the Inspector General can only find 13 checks, which involve more than 112 checks.

If Musk and his slaves want to make themselves useful, maybe they can fill in the missing date of death in the Social Security database.