Veterans' benefits

The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) under the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides a wide variety of benefits to retired or separated United States armed forces personnel and their dependents or survivors.[1] Through the VA, Veterans can receive educational assistance (GI Bill), healthcare, assisted living,[2] home loans, insurance, and burial and memorial services. The VA also provides compensation to disabled veterans[3] who suffer from a medical disorder or injury that was incurred in, or aggravated by, their military service, and which causes social and occupational impairment.[4] Many U.S. states also offer disability benefits for veterans.[5]

Types of benefits

Educational benefits

The VA offers several education and career readiness programs including tuition assistance, vocational training, and career counseling.[6] The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (commonly known as the "Post 9/11 GI Bill") provides full tuition and fees at four-year colleges or other qualified educational programs for Veterans who served on active duty for at least 3 years after September 11, 2001. The Personalized Career Planning and Guidance program (VA Chapter 38) provides free educational and career planning for eligible Veterans. The Montgomery GI Bill provides financial assistance for Veterans that have served at least 2 years on active duty. [7]

Medical benefits

Eligible Veterans can receive VA health care, which covers standard preventative care and treatment services, as well as therapy and rehabilitation services, prosthetic items, and radiation oncology, among other services.[8] Veterans with service-related physical conditions (e.g. chronic illness or injury) or mental health conditions (e.g. PTSD) can also apply for monthly tax-free disability compensation from the VA.[9]

Employment benefits

The Veteran Readiness and Employment program (VA Chapter 31) offers vocational rehabilitation, training, and other career services for Veterans who have a service-related disability.[10] The Veteran Small Business Certification program provides advantages for Veteran-owned small businesses competing for government contracts.[11]

Elderly Benefits

Elderly Veterans can be eligible for a variety of benefits. VA benefits include disability compensation (tax free monetary benefit), pension (providing supplemental income), education and training (GI Bill), health care, home loans, insurance, Veteran Readiness and Employment (services to help with job training,education, and employment), and burial (pay up to $2,000 or $1,500 toward burial expense). [12]

Other benefits

Additional benefits are available through the VA to qualifying Veterans including VA home loans,[13] life insurance,[14] pensions,[15] and miscellaneous grants.[16]

History

Benefits first started in 1776 with the Pension Act of 1776. This granted pensions to disabled soldiers and their families.[17] Archival record of the benefits awarded to injured soldiers and veterans of the American Civil War began after 1865. Union soldiers received a more committed pension archival effort on the part of the Federal government, thanks to superior databases in the North and a more stable bureaucratic oversight.[18] Turmoil during Reconstruction in the war-weary South made any effort at maintaining pension records difficult if not impossible. Later university-led research projects would give insight into the history of pension provisions by the Federal government leading up to the Civil War.[19] These analysis shed light on the ever-changing role of compensation in American society and delved into the idea that American Revolutionary War soldiers received superior care after war than later Civil War veterans.[20]

World War I "Bonus"

After World War I, there was a major grass roots effort for paying a "Bonus" to all its veterans, resulting in the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 that promised payments in 1944. In 1932 thousands of veterans from the marched on Washington as the Bonus Army, also known as the Bonus Expeditionary Force, to demand benefits. President Herbert Hoover ordered it to be dispersed by the Army.[21] Finally in 1936 the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act was passed over a President Franklin Roosevelt's veto and paid out $1.5 billion in cash and bonds (2% of GNP) to all the living veterans of 1917-1919, regardless of their needs.[22][23]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Benefit Summary Materials". Veterans Benefits Administration. Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  2. ^ Simmons, Claire (15 January 2015). "Nursing Home Care and the Aid and Attendance Benefit". VeteranAid. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  3. ^ "Service-connected Disabilities". Veterans Benefits Administration. Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  4. ^ "Compensation". Veterans Benefits Administration. Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  5. ^ Absher, Jim (2024-01-11). "Your 2024 State Veteran Benefits". Military.com. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  6. ^ "VA education and training benefits". Veterans Affairs. 2024-05-30. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  7. ^ "Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty (MGIB-AD)". Veterans Affairs. 2025-01-31. Retrieved 2025-10-08.
  8. ^ "VA health care". Veterans Affairs. 2024-06-27. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  9. ^ "VA disability compensation". Veterans Affairs. 2024-05-15. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  10. ^ "Careers and employment". Veterans Affairs. 2024-04-15. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  11. ^ "Veteran Small Business Certification". veterans.certify.sba.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  12. ^ Service, Compensation and Pension. "VA.gov | Veterans Affairs". www.benefits.va.gov. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  13. ^ "VA housing assistance". Veterans Affairs. 2024-04-11. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  14. ^ "VA life insurance". Veterans Affairs. 2024-06-20. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  15. ^ "VA pension benefits". Veterans Affairs. 2024-05-08. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  16. ^ "VA.gov Home". Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 2024-07-16.
  17. ^ Claims, Warrior Allegiance-VA (2024-05-15). "The Evolution of VA Benefits: A Historical Perspective". VA Disability Claim Assistance - Warrior Allegiance. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
  18. ^ "Ancestry® | Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records". www.familybirthrecords.com. Retrieved 2016-04-10.
  19. ^ Oliver, John William (1917-01-01). History of the Civil War Military Pensions, 1861-1865. University of Wisconsin--Madison.
  20. ^ Oliver, John William (1917). "History of the Civil War Military Pensions, 1861-1865".
  21. ^ Donald J. Lisio, "A blunder becomes catastrophe: Hoover, the legion, and the bonus army." Wisconsin Magazine of History (1967): 37-50. online
  22. ^ Lester G. Telser, "The Veterans' Bonus of 1936," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, vol. 26 (2003-2004) pp. 227–243.
  23. ^ Joshua K. Hausman, "Fiscal policy and economic recovery: The case of the 1936 veterans' bonus." American Economic Review 106.4 (2016): 1100-1143. online

Further reading

Further information: Veteran's pension § Further reading, and G.I. Bill § Further reading
  • Altschuler, Glenn, and Stuart Blumin. The GI Bill: The New Deal for Veterans (Oxford UP, 2009) online, for WWII and later veterans
  • Buck, Paul H. The Road To Reunion 1865-1900 (1937), Pulitzer Prize; pp. 236–262. online
  • Cetina, Judith Gladys. " A history of veterans' homes in the United States. 1811–1930" (PhD dissertation, Case Western Reserve University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  1977. 7725147).
  • Cossentino, Thomas A. " 'The ones you sent': American veterans and legacies of the Vietnam War" (PhD dissertation, . Diss. Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, 2022) online.
  • Costa, Dora L. "Pensions and Politics." in The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990 (U of Chicago Press, 1998) pp. 160–187.
  • Davies, Wallace Evan. Patriotism on Parade: The Story of Veterans' and Hereditary Organizations in America, 1783-1900 (Harvard UP, 1955). online
  • Dearing, Mary R. Veterans in Politics: The Story of the G.A.R. LSU Press, 1952) online
  • Dougherty, Kevin. Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience (UP of Mississippi, 2007) online
  • Glasson, William Henry. History of military pension legislation in the United States (Columbia UP, 1900) online.
  • Goldman, Stephen A. One More War to Fight: Union Veterans' Battle for Equality through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Lost Cause (2023)
  • Lisio, Donald J. "A Blunder Becomes Catastrophe: Hoover, the Legion, and the Bonus Army." Wisconsin Magazine of History (1967): 37-50. online
  • Lisio, Donald J. The President and Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and the Bonus Riot (U of Missouri Press, 1974) online
  • Logue, Larry M. "Union Veterans and Their Government: The Effects of Public Policies on Private Lives" Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1992) 22#3 pp. 411–434 online
  • Logue, Larry M., and Michael Barton, eds. The Civil War Veteran: A Historical Reader (NYU Press, 2007) 31 essays by experts. online
  • McConnell, Stuart Charles. Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 (U North Carolina Press, 1992) online
  • Marten, James. Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (U of North Carolina Press, 2011)
  • Ortiz, Stephen R. Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era (NYU Press 2009)
  • Ortiz, Stephen R., ed. Veterans' policies, veterans' politics: New perspectives on veterans in the modern United States (UP of Florida, 2012) online
  • Pencak, William A., ed. Encyclopedia of the Veteran in America (2 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2009) online.
  • Pencak, William. For God & country: the American Legion, 1919-1941 (Northeastern University Press, 1989)
  • Resch, John P., et al. eds. Americans at War: Society, Culture, and the Homefront (4 vol. (Macmillan, 2005), 400 encyclopedic articles, with coverage of veterans from colonial era to 2005.
  • Resch, John. Suffering soldiers: Revolutionary War veterans, moral sentiment, and political culture in the early republic (U Massachusetts Press, 1999) online
  • Rothbard, Murray. "Beginning the Welfare State: Civil War Veterans’ Pensions." Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 22.1 (2019): 68-81. online
  • Sanders, Heywood T. "Paying for the 'Bloody Shirt': The politics of Civil War pensions" in Barry S. Rundquist, ed., Political Benefits: Empirical studies of American public programs (Lexington Books, 1980) pp. 137–160. online
  • Skocpol, Theda. "America's first social security system: The expansion of benefits for Civil War veterans." Political Science Quarterly 108.1 (1993): 85-116 how the welfare state emerged from veterans pensions. online
    • Skocpol, Theda. Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States (Harvard UP, 1995) online
  • Wecter, Dixon. When Johnny comes marching home (1944) online, covers all major wars to 1919
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_benefits