The SSA’s official data indicates that out of 67 million Social Security recipients, only about 53,000—or approximately 0.1 percent—are centenarians.
If most of the payments are fraud that would be roughly $80 million dollars in potential savings.
The Scope of the Cleanup
According to DOGE, over the past two weeks, more than 3.2 million individuals aged 120 and older have been removed from SSA records. However, 9.5 million Social Security numbers belonging to individuals over 120 remain in the system.
Musk initially drew attention to these inconsistencies in February by sharing a spreadsheet showing “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”
He humorously remarked, “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
SSA’s Response and Policy on Age Limits
The SSA has addressed these concerns, explaining in a March 5 statement: “The data reported in the media represent people who do not have a date of death associated with their record. While these people may not be receiving benefits, the agency needs to maintain accurate and complete records.”
