President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk alleges that millions of deaths over 100 years have been paid Social Security, but published data It proves that it is not.
Mask started rumors over the weekend Chart has been posted Social platforms are said to represent more than 20 million people in over 100 years listed in the Social Security Database.
“These are the number of people in the bucket of each age, and the area of death is set to false!” Musk said. “Many vampires” joked that they were gathering social security. He went on to say that the obvious contradiction may be “the biggest scam in history.”
Trump has repeatedly lie at a press conference in Florida on Tuesday, receiving Social Security benefits, saying, “We have millions of people over 100 years.”
Latest data It shows that it is not true, with only around 90,000 beneficiaries over the age of 99 undergoing Social Security retirement checks in December. This is lower than estimate 1000 people out of 101,000 He lives in the United States and is not near the “millions” that the Trump administration claims.
Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudeck tried to clear up the confusion Wednesday.
“The reported data are people in our records with Social Security numbers that do not have a date of death associated with the records. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” Dudek said. said in a statement.
Here's what each age group knows about people who are actually undergoing retirement checks and social security fraud.
How many people over the age of 100 receive Social Security benefits?
In December 2024, nearly 52 million Americans received retirement worker benefits. According to the data From the Social Security Bureau.
Approximately 90,000 of these payments were sent to people over the age of 99, with less than 0.2%.
That's far below what millions of Trump and Musks are warning. It is also lower than the 100 people living in the United States. Estimated 101,000 2024.
In other words, Social Security does not send checks to millions of dead people, more than 100 people.
Instead, Musk and Trump seem to refer to a well-known and long-standing issue with the social security system called “Numinette.”
The database listed the Social Security numbers for people over 100 years old, but were not dead. General Report of the 2023 Institute Inspector.
However, the audit found that “most” of these people were paid Social Security.
The agency has not updated its database as it costs between $5.5 million and $9.7 million, according to the report.
There are other safeguards to ensure that the deceased beneficiary has not been sent a check.
As of 2015, agency Payment will automatically be stopped For people over 115 years old.
How often does Social Security pay after death?
Paying people after accidentally dying happens, but not within the proposed range.
General Report of Agency Inspector From November 2021 It was found that Social Security issued an estimated $298 million payments after death to approximately 24,000 beneficiaries. Those individuals were accidentally kept in “suspended payment status” after their deaths.
The audit said the agency had recovered about $84 million and an estimated $214 million had not been recovered at the time of reporting.
But fraud was not an issue. The audit believes this error is due to failures in policy and technician errors.
“[The Social Security Administration] The report states that it identifies deceased beneficiaries with suspended payment status and ensures that technicians take appropriate measures to record correct death information, according to the report. , and we need to strengthen our policies and controls.”
The audit said maintaining better death data would help prevent identification fraud, but inspectors “did not identify any particular instances of fraud.”
Most American taxpayers probably agree that mistakenly paying people after their deaths is not acceptable no matter how much money they give. However, the issue has not been revealed by Musk or Trump, and the Social Security Administration agreed to the inspector's recommended solution in 2021.
The agency was in the process of implementing some of those changes As of July last year.
Apart from that, JanuaryThe US Treasury has announced It took over $31 million in federal payments that were mistakenly handed over to people who died in a variety of programs, not just Social Security.
How big is Social Security fraud?
Experts who spoke to the press said social security fraud is rare.
“It's a very small problem with that program,” he said.Alex NowrastehVice President of Economic and Social Policy Research at the Libertarian Cato Institute.
Nowrasteh praised Musk for trying to eradicate the problem, but “I don't think it's good to try to exaggerate the amount of fraud, as social security issues aren't primarily about fraudulent things. ” he added.
However, improper payments are a “long-standing challenge” for the Social Security Administration, but again, that doesn't mean that fraud is the main issue.
aJuly 2024 ReportFrom government inspectors, Social Security discovered that between 2015 and 2022, it sent inappropriate payments of approximately $71.8 billion. Most of it was overpayment to the living people.
The total total of nearly $720 billion accounts for 0.84% of the approximately $8.6 trillion paid over the period.
Some of the overpayments have been collected. Still, Social Security had an unrecovered overpayment balance of $23 billion at the end of fiscal year 2023, the audit said.
You can overpay It happens for many reasonsSuch as whether a person's income is greater than expected, whether the status of marriage changes, or whether accurate information is reported to the Social Security Bureau.
The Social Security sub-1% error rate is also considerably lower compared to programs like Medicaid. Over 5% In 2024, again, most of it was due to management errors, not fraud.
“If you have to choose a federal location with a high error rate, Social Security is not near the bottom of the list, not near the top,” he said. Charles Bluffsa senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, specializing in social security.
