From David Weaver writing for The Hill:
Last week, for the first time, the Social Security Administration (SSA) released information on the number of beneficiaries who died in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic began. There were nearly 400,000 more beneficiary deaths in 2020 than the agency tabulated for 2019, representing a 17 percent year-over-year increase. ...
SSA’s statistics almost certainly reflect the concentration of COVID-19 deaths among the populations the agency serves. The CDC's death data, which includes all individuals and not just Social Security beneficiaries, indicates about 500,000 more deaths occurred in the United States in 2020 than in 2019. The CDC estimates that approximately 375,000 deaths in 2020 were due to COVID-19. ...
10 comments:
This sort of echos what some of us have been saying. This blog focuses on disability claims, but those extra deaths result in death inputs, terminations, widows claims, survivors claims, extra proofs, LSDP claims, Medicare adjustments etc which equates to an increase in work for the same number of people to complete.
Well said 10:21.
I always wondered the exact process about notifying the SSA about a deceased beneficiary. You read stories about how others will still collect benefits from a deceased family member. This seemed more common when the SSA was actually sending out physical checks.
These statistics could be a little misleading. Pretty sure a lot were due to Covid. But maybe there were just more SSA beneficiaries than the year before. The Baby Boomers have exploded the strain on the SSA and disability system.
Boomers have long been in their disability prone years and are pretty widely in their dying years now. I guess you'll just have to wait for the 2022 data (assuming we can get a handle on COVID) and see a couple hundred thousand decrease in deaths before you'll believe what's right in front of your eyes.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/OASDIbenies.html
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2021/6f.html#table6.f2
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2020/6f.html#table6.f2
The numbers are here if one is interested in looking at them.
2019 - 64,064,496 totl beneficiaries
2020 - 64,850,867 total beneficiaries
Went up about 1.2 something percent
2019 - 2,378,162 death of beneficiary
2019 - 141,955 death of worker
Total - 2,520,117 deaths
2020 - 2,772,037 death of beneficiary
2020 - 160,453 death of worker
Total - 2,932,490 deaths
-
Difference between 2019 and 2020 - 412,373
3.9% 2019 beneficiary total versus deaths
4.5% 2020 beneficiary total versus deaths
Very back of the envelope and you'd have to look at trends over time but it does seem to have spiked in 2020 and I wonder what that could be?
My mother was an SSA beneficiary who passed in 2020. She did not die of Covid, but she did die because of Covid. She was so terrified of leaving the home and seeking medical care (her husband was immunocompromised) that she did not even attempt to get treatment until she could no longer stand up, let alone care for her husband. What should have been an illness that she would recover from instead became something that her doctor's could not treat because she was too late.
As to 12:57's question, I called up SSA to report her death so that they would not send any more retirement benefit checks, and they already had been notified by the hospital and/or funeral home.
In most states, the act of the local registrar in creating a death certificate also creates a file sent to SSA with the necessary ID data to deal with the death report. But many funeral homes will also fax in a 721 as part of their service. Which is why it's important to not get the SSN wrong for a deceased when handling those end of life actions.
Remember the retirement bell curve for the large generation? 10,000 turning 65 a day. I guess we will see a similar bell curve of death, no matter how long they try to hang on to power, the Reaper awaits them.
And of course, given they say 635,000 is the number of deaths attributed to Covid, the majority of deaths in the US in 2020 were from other causes. But the percentage increase of deaths in 2020 over prior years does make it appear that there was a covid impact on the beneficiary population.
Using beneficiaries only (no worker deaths) 2019 death rate was about 3.89% and 2020 was about 4.21% As the poster above stated, some deaths were only connected to covid only secondarily or tertiary, not as a direct cause. But I suspect the death rate in the US is pretty consistent normally and the increase in deaths indicates other issues in play. But not "more Boomers". Because they've been entering and leaving the system for a while and a are part of the system. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Interesting time to be an actuarial.
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