From Band-Aids to Stepping Stones: How We Can Rebuild Young Adults’ Trust in Public Benefit Systems

As today’s young adults transition from adolescence to adulthood, they face a volatile political and economic environment that includes a shifting public benefits landscape. Access to vital resources like SNAP and Medicaid have been put at risk through reduced federal funding and increased eligibility restrictions. For many young adults, losing public benefits and other sources of financial support can undermine their ability not just to meet their basic needs, but also to achieve their personal, career, and educational goals.

To better understand how young adults are impacted, the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program conducted focus groups with a diverse set of 12 young adults ages 19–25 from eight states—including students, parents, and workers—who have received public benefits. Through these conversations, we learned how they are navigating this period of their lives and what hopes they have for the future.

Challenges Facing Young Adults Today

Young adulthood is often characterized as a time ripe with opportunity. Focus group participants were working toward goals such as finishing college and finding a job, pursuing additional degrees or certificate programs, purchasing a car, or moving out on their own. However, the present reality many young adults face is precarious, and the affordability crisis and diminishing opportunities for economic mobility were top of mind for participants. 

Recent data support their concerns:

• Nearly a third of adults under the age of 30 paid more than 50 percent of their income on rent in 2023.
• Recent college graduates had an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent in December 2025, up from 4.1 percent in December 2022.
• Just under a third (30 percent) of 2025 graduates found full-time employment related to their education within six months of graduating. 

The young adults we spoke with expressed that, even when they feel like they’ve done everything “right,” their goals still feel out of reach as they contend with a tightening job market for early-career professionals as well as the rising cost of living.

The Trust Gap

As young adults navigate these economic pressures and face economic hardship, their trust in government and democracy diminishes. A national poll from the Institute of Politics found that young adults with lower levels of financial stability hold less confident and less favorable views of democracy. 

In the absence of a robust and reliable support system, the young adults we spoke to said they feel isolated in their financial lives with no one to turn to. Growing political polarization has also deteriorated this trust and weakened the sense of a shared community working in one’s best interest. That lack of social cohesion in turn erodes democratic stability, collectiveness, and trust in shared institutions, along with the services those institutions provide—including public benefits. 

“Our generation is so alone.”

Perceptions of Public Benefits

The young adults in our focus groups had nuanced relationships with public benefits. The majority of participants grew up in households that utilized public benefits and/or currently use them today. By and large, they found these programs to be helpful and necessary to meet their basic needs but described them as unreliable, insufficient, and difficult to access. One participant said, “It feels like you’re putting a Band-Aid on something that feels like it needs excessive stitches.” Nonetheless, public benefits are still viewed as a resource worth using, with many participants expressing they would refer these programs to a friend, albeit with caution.

Mistrust, however, was often rooted in negative experiences with public benefits, such as a lapse in receiving them. One young parent shared that their Medicaid coverage was inactive for a period of time, causing their infant daughter to miss multiple doctor appointments. Another participant described a system “glitch” after their partner was disenrolled due to a slight income increase. 

The theme of mistrust also surfaced around privacy concerns in the benefits application process, with one participant stating that intrusive application questions have prevented them from applying for benefits in the past. “I lived with undocumented family and because of that I couldn’t properly apply for EBT,” they explained. Their experience echoes findings across research on public programs that demonstrates a chilling effect when applying for public benefits where immigration status is concerned.

“[We need] resources that are reliable [so] that you don’t have to jump through 10 hoops, don’t have to go back to the last person [you] just talked to. Something reliable, easy, [and] clean, that is for the people.”

Stringent eligibility requirements and income limits add further stress and barriers to economic mobility. Sixty percent of young adult workers enrolled in public benefits report reducing work hours or turning down raises to comply with income thresholds. This phenomenon was captured in our focus group responses. Participants expressed a desire for these systems to be a reliable “stepping stone” without strings attached that force dependence on the system.

Lastly, many participants were uncertain about whether the government will sustain these programs, especially due to recent policy changes such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Given the confusion fueled by changing policies and headlines—fluctuations in benefit amounts, government shutdowns, and new eligibility requirements—it isn’t surprising that young adults have reservations about engaging with these programs. A participant reflected, “It makes me want to not interact with the system…it makes it feel like we’re working for government officials, not the other way around.” However, some of the young adults we spoke to emphasized the power of community, like friends and family, as a form of social insurance, stating, “If the government falls through, you have support through [your] community.”

Envisioning a Better System

For young adults, the ability to meet short-term needs and achieve long-term goals is contingent on having a strong support system, inclusive of public benefits. In the absence of such a system, young adults may struggle to build the foundation they need to thrive, making the transition to young adulthood a key intervention point in a person’s financial life. The young adults we spoke with felt that the available systems were not designed in a manner that garners trust and establishes support. 

“Sometimes you just don’t reach out because you don’t know or don’t think help is out there for you.”

When describing a public benefits system that they trust to serve young adults, focus group participants aligned around three key principles. 

• Grounded in community: The young adults we spoke to expressed a desire for community and deeper human connection, both socially and within the systems that are meant to support them. They lifted up trusted intermediaries such as credit unions, community-based organizations, and cash transfer programs as models for what it means to provide individualized, dignified, and authentic support.
• Normalize stability, not struggle: Programs should enable participants to break cycles of poverty and pursue opportunities for economic mobility, not penalize them for it. In order to trust these programs, the young adults expressed that they need reliable support as they navigate the transition to adulthood.
• Serve as an entry point to other resources: People do not experience their life in siloes, which is why participants commended programs like WIC for providing additional resources such as cooking classes. The young adults we spoke to want support with their mental health as well as financial education focused on budgeting, saving, and filing taxes.

Our current public benefits system falls short of these principles. Now is the time to build a future system that young adults can trust to meet their needs as they navigate adulthood.