Are 150 year olds getting social security payments?

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week Elon Musk revealed that he had been through the Social Security Agencies database and found millions of people aged over 100.

The vast majority of these people are dead, but their accounts and social security numbers remain live.

Elon claimed that he had uncovered ‘the biggest fraud ever’ prompting some news outlets to speculate that billions of dollars might be being paid to these dead people every month.

But is it true? We look at whether this is new information and what the data actually tells us.

Produced and presented by: Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: James Beard

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Radio 4, the more you listen, the more you see.
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Brian Cox.
0:05.7	And I'm Robin Ince, and this is The Infinite Monkey Cage.
0:08.4	In this series, we're going to have a planet off.
0:10.9	I feel like Jupiter wins.
0:12.9	And after all of that, we're just going to chill out a bit.
0:16.0	We're talking about your bog standard.
0:17.9	Ice, not the fancy one.
0:20.2	Science with funny bits.
0:22.0	The new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage.
0:24.2	Listen on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
0:28.1	Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast.
0:30.9	We're the programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Lizzie McNeil.
0:38.0	As we mentioned last week, the Trump administration is featuring a lot in our programs
0:42.9	at the moment. Sorry, we just find them dangling data irresistible. This week, President
0:48.7	Trump was giving another audience to the press about the administration's efforts to cut fraud
0:53.3	and unnecessary spending in
0:55.1	the US government. He revealed that Doge, which is the Department for Government Efficiency,
1:00.7	had discovered that the United States Social Security Administration, which is the body that deals
1:05.4	with the US version of pensions and benefits, had millions of people with live accounts.
1:09.9	There were over 100 years of age.
1:12.9	People that are 120 years old, up to 129, 3,472,000 people. Wow. You know that can't possibly be.
	...

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