The Third Rail

When I interviewed for my current job, I let my future employers know, that I would leverage my experience in using data to make informed decisions. If I was going to try to "help" Veterans I needed to know who and where they were.

As you can see from the data from the model for county populations, by 2050 the 3 segments of the veteran population, 17-44, 45-64 and 65-84 will equalize. The other dynamic worth mentioning, is that the younger demographic ranges eventually feed into the older segments.

Demographic crisis abound

I wrote about this previously on Linkedin here. Also, if you want to experience a less than blissful rabbit hole, watch some demographic based videos by Peter Zeihan.

My initial thought was to start trying to encourage younger veterans to engage with the various support organizations earlier, so that when they needed support they would already be in the system.

You have to opt-in to The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. They do not naturally assume if you were stationed in Iraq near burning pits that they should automatically start processing a claim. Most Veterans do not engage the Veterans Affairs initially on leaving the military. My first interaction with them took 23 years.

Everyone defines there own level for need, success, happiness and so on. So without prodding the Veterans to at least register with the VA, they are left to their own devices. We could probably be helping more Veterans, sooner, if we could engage them at a younger age.

Impact on Veterans aged 17-44?

The VA has identified fied a wide range of issues we can support Veterans on: PTSD, Homelessness, Suicide, Military Sexual Assault / Trauma to name a select few. Problem is Veterans don't automatically get the support when they need it. Additionally there are other issues Veterans face:

• Relating to people who do not know or understand what military personnel have experienced (and many civilians don't know that they don't know!).
• Reconnecting with family and re-establishing a role in the family.
• Joining or creating a community.
• Preparing to enter the work force.
• Returning to a job.
• Creating structure.
• Adjusting to a different pace of life and work.
• Establishing services.

So the sooner we can engage those Veterans, the sooner we can get services and support that have been identified to help those same Veterans.

Veteran Service Organizations

What used to happen was that Veterans would be encouraged to join their local VSO, like Disabled American Veterans (DAV), American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars to name three. The VSO's were a clearing house of knowledge and experience and could help guide a veteran through engaging with the VA. These VSO populations swelled in the 90's and have been on a decline in membership since.

Here's the Third Rail Part.

Fellow Linkedin person, Les Davis, published these thoughts in 2016. 664 comments later and while I didn't read all of them some of his ideas were less than happily recieved. The point of his article was to increase enrollment of younger vets in to VSOs because this was one of the ways Veterans received support.

One reason VSO's are important they are a free resource to file VA Claims and Appeals. A quick look at the chart above shows there is a significant difference between a Veteran self filing for Allowed, Denied and them getting help. Main point is Veterans need help filing and VSO and State services are a free resource for Veterans.

I am not interested in the fight from the comments in Les's article in 2016. I am interested in the numbers that say, according to the model, we are going to have less and less Veterans. There is a good chance that there will have to be some consolidation by VSO's at some point or at least, adjusted missions to stay relevant and helpful. I don't make the demographics and while we could argue the validity of birth rates here is some data.

About 2.1 is what we need

The concept of the replacement rate has been in place since around 1930 and is equal to about 2.1 for the U.S. (as for most developed countries). A number above 2.1 is associated with a growing population, and anything lower than 2.1 indicates population decline.Jul 8, 2022

So, it seems like your beating around the bush

I am, it's a third rail. Here are some of the articles I have read about the problem. Everyone says they want to fix it, but it's not so easy.

I am putting it out in the ether because this community (Linkedin) has many varied and divergent perspectives on how to solve things. If it were easy, I would be writing about Quantum Tunneling or something else. :)

Maybe you can bounce around some ideas on how we can get a group of older folks to help change a little so that some younger folks can change a little so they can benefit each other. What do you think?