Actual Social Security Recipient Numbers (Recent Data)
- Total monthly Social Security beneficiaries (all ages, including retirement, survivors, disability): Around 67–73 million people (varying slightly by year; e.g., ~69 million in 2025 projections).
- Recipients over 100 years old: Extremely low—only about 0.1% of total benefits go to people over 100. SSA data shows roughly 50,000–90,000 beneficiaries aged 99+ or 100+ in recent years (e.g., ~53,000 over 100 in late 2023; ~90,000 aged 99+ in December 2024/2025 estimates).
- Recipients over 80: This is a larger group (many retirees fall here), but nowhere near 40 million. The vast majority of beneficiaries are in the 62–85 range due to Baby Boomers retiring.
What the DOGE-Related Claims Actually Involved
DOGE (led by Elon Musk and others under the Trump administration) accessed SSA databases in 2025 to hunt for fraud, waste, and abuse. Musk shared charts and posts claiming massive numbers of “dead” or impossibly old people marked as alive in the system, including:
- Figures like 20+ million people over 100 (sometimes specified as 15–20 million over 110–120+), with some posts alluding to higher counts in extreme age brackets (e.g., millions over 130–150).
- These came from the SSA’s Numident database—a historical record of every Social Security number ever issued (hundreds of millions of entries, far exceeding the current U.S. population or beneficiary count).
The key misunderstanding:
- These high numbers were not active beneficiaries receiving payments. They were old records (often from pre-1920 births) lacking a recorded death date due to historical data gaps (pre-electronic records).
- A 2023 SSA Inspector General audit found ~18.9 million Numident entries for people over 100 without death info, but almost none were receiving benefits or had recent earnings/activity.
- SSA automatically stops payments at age 115+ and has processes (e.g., cross-checks with Medicare usage, death reports from states/funeral homes) to prevent payments to the deceased. Improper payments overall are <1% (mostly overpayments to living people), not widespread fraud to dead/centenarian recipients.
DOGE Actions and Outcomes
- DOGE highlighted “cleaning up” records by marking millions (e.g., ~7–10 million over 120+) as deceased in the database to update historical inaccuracies.
- No evidence emerged of widespread payments to dead people or centenarians on the scale claimed (e.g., only rare cases like ~13 payments to those over 112 in older audits).
- Multiple sources (SSA acting commissioners, inspector general reports, fact-checks from AP, CBS, NYT, etc.) debunked the fraud claims as misread data. Trump and Musk repeated versions of these (e.g., “millions over 100” or “150-year-olds” getting checks), but they were refuted as not reflecting actual benefit payments.
In summary, there is no verified DOGE audit breakdown showing 40 million recipients over 80 or 25 million over 100 actually receiving Social Security benefits. Those numbers likely refer to outdated Numident records (not payments), and official data shows centenarian recipients in the tens of thousands at most—not millions. Social Security’s payment accuracy remains very high (~99.7%), with minimal fraud related to deceased or extremely elderly beneficiaries. If this refers to a specific post or chart, feel free to share more details for further clarification!
