"Singhals" <singhals@erols.com> wrote: > HOWEVER -- if you're looking for someone who died after 1963 and > they're not there, that's reasonable too. For a fairly long > period, Railroad workers had a separate pension plan which didn't > report to SSA; so did the military, the Federal, state, and local > governments. My GF a retired Railroader died in 1964; his pension > checks said Railroad Retirement and his death isn't on the SSDI, > even though I personally filed the death-benefits papers on his > widow's behalf. I guess this can't be said too many times. The SSDI is extracted from a Social Security Administration datafile called the "Death Master Index," which SSA describes as "a list of deaths" that have been reported to it. You cannot make any assumptions as to why some names are there and others are not, for there are no such criteria. IOW, if a name is there, fine. If not, it's not. In either case, you can draw no conclusions. Only these four conditions must exist for a name to be on the list: 1. The person is dead. 2. The person had a SS number. 3. Someone reported the death to SSA. 4. The SSA entered the information in its database (correctly). Other than the post-1961 requirement, the only inference that can be drawn about those not on the list is that one of the four conditions above was not met. Above all, there is no requirement that a person listed was receiving or had received any SS benefit or that a death benefit was applied for or paid because of the death of that person. In short: Either a name is there or it is not and there is no real reasons for either condition! Regards, Richard "Richard A. Pence" <richardpence@pipeline.com>