Many Americans’ enthusiasm for religion, patriotism and having children has fallen rapidly in the past few years, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll.
About 39% of the early March poll’s respondents said they view religion as very important, compared to 48% in 2019, the WSJ reported. Roughly 61% and 43% respectively placed high importance on patriotism and having children that year, sliding to just 38% and 30% this month.
“Perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values,” Public Opinion Strategies co-founding pollster Bill McInturff, who helped run an earlier poll on the issues, told the WSJ. The U.S. birthrate rose by about 1% in 2021 amid the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first such increase in seven years.
Around 20% of individuals surveyed deemed religion somewhat important, the new poll shows, while about 35% and 36% respectively attached that level of importance to patriotism and having children. Approximately 47% identified as at least moderately religious, with 29% denying any religiosity at all.
Roughly 31% of Americans characterized money as highly important in 1998, surging to 41% in 2019 and 43% in 2023, while no other surveyed value saw enthusiasm increase across that entire time span, the WSJ reported. The segment of respondents assigning high importance to community involvement rose from 47% in 1998 to 62% in 2019, but dropped to 27% this year.
“These differences are so dramatic, it paints a new and surprising portrait of a changing America,” Public Opinion Strategies co-founding pollster McInturff told the WSJ.
The new poll surveyed 1,019 adults with a 4.1% margin of sampling error.
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