Elon Musk has claimed that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security benefits, including some who are 150 years old. However, experts say he is misreading the agency’s data. “Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk wrote in one social media post.
Former President Donald Trump repeated many of the same numbers at a recent press conference. However, Social Security policy experts and economists say Musk is mistaken. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has multiple databases.
One gets sent to the Treasury Department each month outlining who receives payments. According to this data, of the 67 million people who receive Social Security benefits, only 0.1% are over 100. When they’re throwing around numbers like tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, well, there’s only 67 million total.
What are they talking about? Half the people are actually dead? The numbers are so ridiculous.
Misreading Social Security data
It’s not true,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The SSA does make some improper payments, but they are not widespread (roughly 1%) and most mistakes are overpayments to living beneficiaries, according to a July 2024 inspector general’s report.
That report found from 2015 through 2022, the SSA made $71.8 billion in improper payments out of the $1 trillion in benefits it issues every year. Another SSA database called Numident contains a record of every person who has ever been assigned a Social Security number. There are people in this system who have died but don’t have a date of death recorded because they lived long before electronic records were established.
Experts say this data set has nothing to do with monthly payments but appears to be where Musk is getting information about millions of very old people in the system. According to audits, the government has known the Numident system has these flaws for years. A 2023 inspector general’s report found nearly 19 million people born before 1920 who do not have death information in the record.
The report noted that the SSA decided not to fix these discrepancies because of the high cost (over $9 million) and “limited benefit” it would provide the agency. Multiple checks are also in place, like automatically stopping payments at age 115, to prevent deceased individuals from getting benefits. Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, said it is “transparently obvious that [Musk] is misinterpreting or misrepresenting” the Social Security data.
This is not the first time Musk has spread false or misleading information since taking on his government oversight role.
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