Headline Roundup • February 18th, 2025
Are 150-Year-Olds Receiving Social Security Benefits?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Last week, Elon Musk said, “There's crazy things, like, just a cursory examination of Social Security and we've got people in there that are about 150 years old… I think they're probably dead is my guess, or they should be very famous. One of the two.”
The Details: According to PolitiFact (Lean Left bias), improper payments are a longstanding concern, but there is another possible explanation for the 150-year-olds appearing in the Social Security database. An international standard, called ISO 8601, codes a missing value for a date as May 20, 1875—which in 2025, rounds out to 150. Some coding systems may default to 1875 if the date of birth is unknown, which may be the case for some immigrants, or the data may be missing because there are multiple fields for it and it isn't needed for all calculations. While this explanation is plausible, it hasn't been proven. Musk posted the age breakdown of Social Security recipients showing millions are listed above age 150.
Overpayments: Fewer than 1% of Social Security payments are improperly made according to audits, but the agency pays over $1 trillion a year. An inspector general’s report from November 2021 found $298 million worth of payments after death to around 24,000 beneficiaries.
How The Media Covered It: While Fox Business (Lean Right) only included Musk's comments, PolitiFact and Daily Kos (Left) emphasized ISO 8601 as a possible explanation for the tracking errors. Associated Press (Left) said the numbers from Musk and Trump "are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data," and that "most of the erroneous payments" in recent years "were overpayments to living people."
Featured Coverage of this Story
Billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday claimed that a cursory review of Social Security records by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found evidence that the safety net program is paying benefits to 150-year-olds.
Musk, who has been tasked with leading DOGE as a special government employee, spoke to reporters on Tuesday from the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump and said DOGE found payments going to beneficiaries listed as being around the age of 150, though he didn't go into detail about the claims.
AP
In a closely watched Oval Office event, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk shared some of the findings and rationale behind his Department of Government Efficiency, which President Donald Trump has tasked with cutting spending across the government.
As an example of his work so far, Musk cited some "crazy things" that had emerged in just the "cursory examination of Social Security" his team was undertaking.
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