Putting an End To The Epidemic of Individuals on Welfare

Picture of Students Learning in a Classroom

            The United States is currently going through an epidemic that is not spoke about enough. The number of American citizens who rely on some sort of government assistance program to get by. According to information put out by ASPE (Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in 2023, there was 99.1 million American citizens who relied on some sort of government assistance. This means that 1 in 3 American’s rely on our government to provide them with what they need to live. This is a problem. We cannot have a third of our country incapable of living on their own. To counteract this problem, we need to focus more on our next generation. We need to ensure that students are being taught correctly and getting the resources they need to be successful. This is especially true when dealing with kids who suffer from a learning disability. When these kids that are struggling do not receive the help they need, we end up paying for it later through government assistance, to fix this we must shift the focus from providing government assistance to building up the skills of our next generation.

            Students with learning disabilities face many challenges that someone without a learning disability would not understand. These challenges severely impact students’ ability to learn, leaving them more likely to rely on government assistance in the future. These challenges could include not being able to read, being unable to pay attention, being unable to sit still, etc. Due to the wide range of learning disabilities, there are many different challenges and experiences these students face. These challenges and impacts inhibit students’ abilities to learn and often require special attention to allowing the student to learn on the same level as a student without their disability would be able to. Due to this, many of the students who suffer from learning disabilities end up on government assistance because they were improperly prepared to live their lives supporting themselves.

            To put into perspective just how major government assistance is, I will lay down some numbers. According to incharge.org “The average SNAP benefit for a single person in 2024 is $202 per month.” Additionally, according to a paper written by two professors of Health Policy and Management at Korea University say, “Around 8 percent of children in the United States have learning disability.” Pairing that with information from the US Census Bureau that there were 72.5 million children in the United States in 2022, we can assume that there are 5.8 million children in the United States who suffer from a learning disability. If we assume that each of these children grow up and end up on SNAP, the government would be paying out a little over $1.1 billion per month in just SNAP. There are many other government assistance programs that individuals can rely on as well, it is not just SNAP. In fact, according to a report from the Budget Committee, the United States spent over $1.19 trillion on government assistance in fiscal year 2022. This money was spread across eighty different welfare programs. This number will continue to rise until we do something to prevent our future generations from having to rely on government assistance.

            In recent years we have seen the number of people on government assistance rise at an insane rate. In just 2015 the numbers were about fifty million, and about 10 years later it doubled with the number going up to 100 million. This is not a maintainable way to operate the country. We are using around 20% of the federal budget on government assistance, $1.19 trillion in the fiscal year of 2022 to be exact. This is money that could be going to many other avenues to improve our country. We need to shift our focus from helping the ones who need it to the ones who could potentially need it in the future so we can prevent them from ever having to rely on government assistance.