Earning a living should not be a problem in the modern world with basically any kind of job. One of the big problems is people want the latest iphone, the best car, the most luxurious home, holidays, etc.
The expectation of life had been set too high to make it happen even for a small part of the population. What is actually needed is way, way different from what is being promoted by media and society.
Hmm.. I don't believe that the countless Walmart and Amazon warehouse employees on food stamps are at the edge of poverty because they bought the latest iphone, best car and most luxurious home.
Yes people who go out and have kids without thinking through how they will provide for them usually have to work pretty hard at first. Still most of the people I've seen in this situation aren't really as bad off as they think. If you didn't plan for having kids, you likely aren't in very good control of your budget either and a small investment of time in learning how to manage and budget your finances can take off most of the financial strain.
(That isn't to say there aren't some people who are in really bad situations due to random events, but I still find it rare to see people who are struggling from things that are/were completely outside of their control.)
I don't believe all children are planned. Is it harder to get started in life with kids? Of course. When you choose a hard path life is harder. Not impossible, but harder. As I said, I know families with a whole lot of kids and not much education that do just fine through hard work and very careful budgeting.
Which is what you want to believe. You want to believe that it is these people's fault; that they did things wrong, and not that it was an accident that could easily have happened to you. That makes it much easier for you to sit in judgement over them, and for you to justify to yourself that you're better than them, and to deny assistance to them. After all, it was their own fault; they were the ones with poor self control. Why should they get any help?
But it is.
15% of the population have an IQ of less than 85, that's about 48 million people in the US alone.
Not even the military thinks they can do anything reasonable with them (if you under 83 they don't want you so it's probably 1 in 10 people, I guess) and they try to get as many people as they can.
Most people I meet (across all classes mind you) are scrappy and pretty selective about what they buy.
It would be interesting to see the thought process and methodology that brought you to this conclusion.