Does the SSA use the middle two digits to track ethnicity?
The details are available in this long description. The first three digits reflect the location of the residence given on the application for an SSN. They used to depend only on the SSA office that issued the number. The SSA regularly publishes tables showing the latest numbers being issued for each area. There is a persistent rumor that the SSA encodes ethnicity in the middle two digits. Most people have an even number as their fifth digit, independent of ethnicity. This is because these numbers are handed out in a strange sequence, and most regions of the country haven’t reached the odd numbers yet.
