How to Determine if a Person is Deceased.

The primary source of death information for people in the US is the Social Security Administration Death Index, While the Index supposedly reports deaths for the years 1935 to 2014, it really is only accurate for the late 1980’s to 2014 and not actually complete for those years. In order for a person to be included in the Index, the death had to be reported to Social Security. Reporting was sporadic before the late 1980’s. The routine reporting sequence is for the funeral home to report a death to the local Social Security Administration office. In the case of 9/11, few deaths were reported since few of the dead were processed in this normal manner.