U.S. Social Security Death Index – Kathi Sittner
When Social Security benefits were instituted in 1937, each employed person filed an application for a Social Security number. The application form asked questions concerning birth date and place, parents’ names, spouse’s name, and residence address at the time of the application. To receive benefits, individuals were also required to document their births, even if their birth states had not required birth registration. The 1880 and 1900 census enumerations were partially or fully indexed to help provide this documentation, and, during this time, many delayed birth certificates were issued by counties when individuals submitted family information such as Bibles to the court. The resulting information was kept in the individual’s Social Security files and is now available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Social Security Administration through the Freedom of Information Act.
Indexes to these records are now accessible through the Social Security Death Index of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City and through its branch family history centers, and it is available for purchase on CD-ROM as part of the FHL Family Search program; online on CompuServe; for purchase in nine track tape format on 9- or 12-inch reels from the Social Security Administration; on CD-ROM from Cambridge, Inc.; and through the “Social Security Death Benefit Index” portion of the Banner Blue (BB) Division of Broderbund’s Master Name Index, which is included with their Family Tree Maker computer program, or as “Family Archives,” a separate program on two CD-ROMs.
The FHL’s Social Security Death Index includes approximately 60 million deceased people who had Social Security numbers and whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration between 1962 and 1993, soon to be 1994. A few earlier and later deaths are also included, and the list is updated periodically as further information is received.
The index lists names first by the surname, then the given name, then the year of birth. It does not specify the birthplace or provide the names of the spouse or children, so sometimes several entries fit the individual being sought. While the place or residence and year of birth are helpful in determining the correct person, this data is not required to access the index. To find an individual, look for the person’s name as used for legal purposes at the time of death. Thus, married women are generally found under their last married names, and if a person changed his or her name, the final, not the original, name would be indexed. In a few cases, a married woman may be found under her maiden name, especially if she worked only before her marriage and never informed the Social Security Administration of her marriage. Sometimes nicknames are used, but more often the formal, first Christian name is the one found in the index. In cases in which a first attempt to locate the individual is unsuccessful, try alternate spellings, as they may be indexed by different Soundex codes.
You can filter or limit your search to specific selected states. You can search only those states where a Social Security number may have been issued to the person or only those states where the person may have lived at the time of death. Filtering increases the time required for the computer to display the list, but can be very helpful when seeking a common name.
Information on the computer screen shows all persons within the designated search area who have the name you entered, beginning with the birth year you have specified. Each entry tells the birth year, the state where the Social Security number was issued, the year of death, and the last state where the person resided. When an individual’s name is highlighted, further information about this person appears: the birth month and year, the Social Security number, the death month and year (after 1987 the day of death is also included), the state of residence at death, the state where the death benefit was sent, and the postal zip codes of these last two places. If a person died before zip codes were listed (the mid-1960s), the locality information may not be included.
Because the BB program is presently the most commonly used alternative to the FHL version, I would like to point out that, while the information provided on the BB program is similar, the programs are very different. On the positive side, although generally very time-consuming unless the name is extremely unusual, the BB program allows a search for a female individual by a first name and a known birth date but unknown death surname or for a known Social Security number, such as for a child under 18 who was adopted and whose name was subsequently changed. The FHL program does not have these features, which can be extremely useful in locating “lost” family members who may have useful information about your ancestral family. The BB program also includes quite a few names from the original Social Security lists which did not meet the criteria to be included in the final Social Security Death Index. However, compared to the FHL index, BB’s index is not Soundex indexed, is slow, and requires an exact spelling of the name as entered in the index. This is a problem, since the index often truncates long names such as “Johnso” instead of Johnson, skips spaces such as “Gbb” for Gibb, and includes some incorrect spellings such as “Dgnohue” instead of Donohue. These problems can be partially avoided by using wild card entries, but the result is a cumbersome list of names which take a long time to search. If a state is specified for an individual but no zip code is available for that state, BB” program will not find the individual, whereas the FHL program does not depend on the zip codes and if an exact match is not found, it will simply list all people by that surname as alternatives. Similarly, if a “known” death year is specified when using the BB program but the year is actually incorrect or not listed, that individual cannot be found. An individual found in the BB program, cannot be placed in a holding file, and an attempt must be made to find the individual’s death place by going to a separate Zip Code Directory, whereas the FHL index provides immediate information simply by entering on the name and does allow for storage in a holding file.
If you find a person in the Social Security Death Index, you can order copies of the Social Security file from the Social Security Administration. Send a copy of the information or a letter which provides the Social Security number and information and a check to:
Social Security Administration
4-H8 Annex Building
6401 Security Blvd.
Baltimore, MD 21235
Attn: Freedom of Information Officer
Responses take about three months.
If you don’t find an individual in the file, you may still be able to obtain copies of the Social Security file by locating his or her death certificate which often includes the Social Security number. This can then be used to request the records. Remember that the individual may not be in the index because he or she never received a Social Security number, because relatives did not report the death to the Social Security Administration, because the individual died before 1962 when the records were computerized, or because of an error in issuing or reporting the Social Security number.
