One of the questions we get asked by clients is ‘What is the reason to get additional mortality data if we already get the Social Security Administration (SSA) Death Master File (DMF)?’ The answer is simple: While the SSA DMF had very good coverage of mortality in the past, there was a legislative change in 2011 that forced them to remove protected state death records. That change led to a dramatic decline in the number of deaths available to users of the DMF and created a gap in the most important and recent mortality data that researchers need. Veritas is an approved licenser of the SSA DMF as the death records it includes are of high quality, but we supplement it with additional sources like obituaries, internments, and memorials, resulting in strong overall mortality coverage even after 2011. (As seen in the graph below for Veritas’s Fact of Death Mortality Index compared to the SSA DMF.)

If you are interested in learning more about our mortality data, please reach out to us via sales@veritasdataresearch.com or message us on our website.