To All,

The Social Security Administration's Death Master File, the source for
the SSDI's that are commercially available, appears to list all people in
the SSA's system who have been reliably reported to them as dead. I
believe that this is done usually by either by a family member or a
funeral home, although it's reasonable to assume that the SSA accepts
reports >from others, such as state or local health departments. Whether
or not a person has paid into the Social Security system, has received
benefits (monthly retirement payments, a funeral payment, SSI payments, or
otherwise), or done anything else besides simply have a social security
number (or railroad retirement number) assigned to them seems not to
matter. The only thing that I can tell makes a difference is whether the
death occurred since approximately 1962.

For example, there are already listings for unfortunate infants with
the surnames Smith and Jones born in the year 2003, and one Smith born in
2004 is listed. (Recent deaths do not appear on all lists; some sites
have them, some do not.) I assume that most of the 1 year olds didn't pay
into the system. Two purposes that the SSA has in recording all deaths is
preventing identity theft and using numbers to obtain benefits
fraudulently.

It's also my guess that if a deceased person is not listed in the SSDI,
it's because either the death was not reported to SSA, or for a
"technical" factor like the name being recorded inaccurately in the Death
Master File, information being transmitted incorrectly >from the Death
Master File to the SSDI, or a name and number not matching (so that no
information for that individual goes to the DMA).

There are several sites with more information on this; for example,
http://www.ntis.gov/products/ssa-dmf.asp?loc=4-0-0

Ira Leviton
New York, N.Y.
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