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Where people over 120 getting social security benefits
Executive summary
Claims that people older than 120 (or as extreme as 150) are collecting Social Security are false as presented: reporting and SSA statements say many database entries show impossibly old ages because of missing or default birthdate coding and record issues, but those entries are not the same as active beneficiaries receiving monthly payments [1] [2]. The SSA has been auditing and correcting aged records and its public beneficiary-by-age data is the authoritative way to see who is being paid [3] [4].
1. Why the “150‑year‑old” story spread — bad data, not actual payments
The viral claims sprang from screenshots and database extracts that showed entries with birthdates defaulted to 1875, producing ages of about 150 in 2025; Wired and PolitiFact explained that missing or incomplete birthdate fields and defaulting to an archival reference date produce those anomalous ages [1] [5]. Marketplace and PolitiFact emphasized that coding and display conventions — not literal living 150‑year‑olds — are the likeliest explanation [6] [5].
2. The Social Security Administration’s position: entries don’t equal payouts
The acting Social Security commissioner explicitly clarified that the presence of very old ages in agency systems does not mean those people are receiving monthly checks, and that many of the flagged records are data artifacts rather than active payments [2]. SSA itself is identifying and correcting beneficiary records of people 100 and older to determine continued eligibility and to remove obvious errors [3].
3. How the SSA hunts for and fixes aged records
The SSA uses outside data — for example, Medicare enrollment and activity — as indicators to prioritize cases of beneficiaries age 90 or older who are “in pay status” to confirm continued eligibility; that process is part of an ongoing effort to clean up century‑old records and reconcile death information [3]. The agency’s public tools and datasets (like the beneficiary-by-age tables) are designed to show current paid beneficiaries, with privacy measures to suppress tiny counts, and thus are the primary sources for who is actually being paid [4].
4. Independent fact‑checks and experts call the “millions of centenarians” idea implausible
PolitiFact, Marketplace, and subject‑matter experts described the notion that millions of centenarians or supercentenarians are collecting benefits as “preposterous” and traced the problem to database defaults or coding conventions rather than actual payments [6] [5]. Wired noted systems often default to a reference point when birthdates are missing, which explains batches of entries showing age 150 [1].
5. What the public data can (and cannot) tell you
The SSA’s “beneficiaries by age” tool lets researchers and the public view the number of current paid beneficiaries by exact age, and privacy rules suppress cells with only one or two beneficiaries [4]. Available sources do not mention a verified public count showing millions of people over 120 actively receiving monthly Social Security checks; instead, they show the agency is investigating and correcting records of people 90 and older [3] [4].
6. Competing narratives and possible agendas to note
High‑profile social posts and political remarks amplified the story; The Hill reported that comments from public figures triggered scrutiny and that a software‑processing issue with legacy COBOL code was cited in reporting as one technical explanation [2]. Fact‑checkers and academics pushed back, suggesting the viral framing served political theater more than policy truth; PolitiFact and Marketplace traced the technical roots of the anomaly and warned against treating database artifacts as evidence of large‑scale fraud [5] [6].
7. If you want to confirm who is actually paid
Use SSA’s official beneficiary‑by‑age tables and SSA press releases for authoritative counts and policy changes; the agency also announced steps to identify and correct aged records and publishes annual/periodic statistical supplements and press releases on benefits and COLA adjustments [4] [7]. For specific disputed claims about extraordinary ages receiving checks, current reporting advises relying on SSA statements and independent fact‑checks rather than viral screenshots [2] [5].
Limitations: these sources focus on the 2024–2025 surge of attention and the SSA’s record‑cleanup efforts; available sources do not mention a verified dataset proving millions over 120 are receiving Social Security payments, nor do they provide a single definitive final tally of corrected records through late 2025 [3] [4].