Under an international standard called ISO 8601, a missing value for a date is coded as May 20, 1875, because that was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the “Convention du Mètre.”
For that reason, under some coding systems, a missing value for a date will default to 1875 — which in the year 2025 produces a round figure of 150.
“Some people, particularly some immigrants, really don’t know their exact birthday, so there would have to be some alternative means of verification,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank, and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department during the Reagan administration.
As a percentage of all payments, improper Social Security payments account for 0.84% of the total, the inspector general has found.
That’s “better than any private insurance company in the nation,” and with a lower cost of administration, said Henry J. Aaron, a fellow with the Brookings Institution think tank and a former chair of the Social Security Advisory Board.