No, 150 year olds aren’t collecting social security benefits
Musk first claimed the claim during a press conference in the Oval Office last week. He said that “a cursory examination of Social Security revealed that we had people who were 150 years old.” Musk first made the claims during his Oval Office press conference last week, when he claimed that a “cursory examination of Social Security revealed people who were 150 years old.” They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records… So that’s a case where I think they’re probably dead.” They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records … So that’s a case where I think they’re probably dead.”
While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by the right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets.
Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.
COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.
Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. Most commonly, the date May 20, 1875 is used, because it was the date of the international standard-setting conference in Paris known as “Convention du Metre”. Musk could have also looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches age 115.
However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down and posted a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X. He wrote that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with death field set to FALSE!” Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.
However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X, writing that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”
The figures suggested that over 10 millions people aged over 120 were collecting benefits.
“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk wrote.
The database Musk took the screenshot from listed almost 400 million people, which is more than five times the number of people receiving benefits in 2024, according to the SSA’s own website. It’s also significantly more than the entire US population.
The fact that the Social Security system contains millions of entries from people who are dead is likely distinct from a potential COBOL-caused error, and also not news. In a report published by the SSA inspector general in 2023, it was found that 98 per cent of the Social Security database entries for people aged 100 and older were not receiving any benefits. The report also stated that updating the database would be too expensive.
