Was there an age restriction on an application for social security in the 1940's.

+8 votes
260 views
John James Downes, born in Ireland in 1882 and arriving in the US in 1883, applied for a social security number in 1942 in Lakeland, Florida. He gave the correct date of birth (May 12th) but added 9 years to the date making it 1891 instead of 1882. He also subtracted 10 years from his age saying he was 50 and gave his place of birth as Queens, New York instead of Ireland. All other details are correct; parents' names, place of employment, where he lived, etc.

I'm wondering if you couldn't apply for a social security number if you were 60 or thereabouts. That's the only reason I can come up with for doing this. Unless, of course, he had already lied about his age when he married and he wanted to be consistent.

He knew his correct date of birth when he registered for the WWI draft as a naturalised citizen.
in Genealogy Help by Rosemary Jones G2G6 Pilot (259k points)
retagged by Keith Hathaway

You can read what you do not know about social-security numbers by going to the WikiTree profile of: Ida May "Aunt Ida" Fuller

Note: I attempted to edit the profile a few moments ago and corrupted it? Edits not taking, probably because of other activity with this profile

Note 2: Bio display repaired.

Thank you George. I'd read about Ida May while searching for something on age restrictions in the 1940's. I couldn't find anything that specifically laid down the rules that were in force in 1942 when John James Downes applied for a social security number.

2 Answers

+4 votes
To receive Social Security you have to work a minimum of ten years prior to applying for the benefit.  It could be he was gaming the system.
by Tony Bell G2G6 Mach 1 (15.1k points)
He wasn't gaming the system that way Tony. He had been working in the menswear business since at least 1920 (census) and is in the Tampa Directory through the 1940's.
If he was gaming it I suspect it was because of his age; he was 60 when he applied for a social security number.
The other gaming possibility is that he wanted to appear to have been married for ten years to a wife who was eligible for a higher amount than he would have made through his own withholdings. You have to have been married for ten years to get a distribution through a spouse, but can continue to work adding to your own eventual payout while you receive the additional check. At 65, he could have done this without penalty…if he cold show that he had been married for ten years.

Short answer: Beats me. But I think your instincts that he was "gaming" are good.
His wife was a housewife Dorothy and she died in 1940, 2 years before he applied. I'm missing the 1930 census for both he and his wife and at least through 1926 she wasn't working. I haven't managed to track him down in the 1940 census either but from the Florida census of 1935 and his wife's death certificate for 1940 they were still living in Hillsborough County (Tampa area).
Well, so much for that theory, Rosemary!
I also looked in Ancestry's new Social Security Application and Claims Index (1936-2007) and he's not there by name or by social security number. I thought I should have been able to pull up the application but it's not there. I bought a copy of it from Social Security which is how I found out that there was a little fudging going on.
+1 vote
This doesn't sound right at all, as I received a social security number at age 16, my brother at age 15 in the U.S. in the 1960s. I think it was said that at birth, a child could get one back then. We never had any Florida relatives except Wrigthts who married Downes's who lived at Miami, Fla. One had to back up information about births with documents in earlier times in the U.S. We had two James's in our lineage from Delaware and MD. One went to Louisiana and other went to Texas and changed his last middle name.
by

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