Social security death index. What is it? Containing around 65 million names and vital information of mainly deceased Americans, the SSDI is an extremely large and important database, especially for geneology enthusiasts.

What sort of details are kept? For information to be archived in the SSDI, a death needs to have been reported, or, for example, a surviving relative may have contacted the Social Security Administration (SSA) seeking to stop the Social Security Benefits (SSB) of a parent.

Social Security Death Records (SSDR) contain the following data on a deceased person:

Last name
First name
Date of Birth
Date of Death
Where the last SSB was sent
State of residence
Where the SSN was issued
Last known address

A Search Tip: When doing a search in the SSDI, do not include the middle initial. Middle names were not indexed. Use first and last names only.

What period is covered by these records? Most of the birth dates recorded are from the early decades of the last century: 1900 to 1930 Death dates are mainly from the period 1962 to 1988. It was in the early 1960