Social Security is designed to support Americans in their golden years, but according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the program's database includes more than just the living.
Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) -- an initiative aimed at cutting wasteful spending and unnecessary regulations -- recently shared astonishing statistics about the age distribution in the Social Security system.
"According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!" he wrote. "Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security."
The database reportedly lists millions of individuals between the ages of 100 and 149, along with 1,345,083 people aged 150 to 159. Even more startling, over 120,000 individuals are recorded as being 160 or older -- including more than 1,000 between 220 and 229. One entry even lists a person aged 360 to 369 -- older than the United States itself.
Musk's revelation quickly went viral. As of this writing, his post has amassed over 92 million views, 405,000 likes, and 46,000 comments.
However, while the database may contain records of the long-deceased, that doesn't necessarily mean they're collecting benefits. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), as of December 2024, just 89,106 retired worker beneficiaries aged 99 and over were actively receiving payments.
The discrepancy may be linked to Social Security's software, which runs on the COBOL programming language. Wired reported that COBOL lacks a built-in date type, leading some implementations to assign missing or incomplete birth dates to a default reference point -- typically 150 years ago.
A July 2023 report from Social Security's inspector general found that nearly 18.9 million individuals in the database were listed as born in 1920 or earlier with no corresponding death information. However, the report noted that "almost none" of them were receiving payments from the agency. The SSA also says it automatically halts payments at age 115.
That said, a July 2024 report from the inspector general revealed that between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, Social Security issued approximately $71.8 billion in improper payments, noting that "most of which were overpayments" -- presumably of rightful, living recipients. This represented about 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in total benefits the agency disbursed during that period. This could be an issue Musk's team could focus on instead.
Musk's vampire hunt isn't just for fun -- he's on a mission to expose wasteful government spending. And if there's one program facing financial strain, it's Social Security.