A new poll commissioned by the Wall Street Journal suggests that Americans, especially younger ones, are veering away from the values and priorities that have underpinned the country’s psyche as far back as its founding in the 18th century.

The percentage of Americans who say such things as patriotism, community involvement, and religion are “very important” to them has plunged since the late 1990s, according to the pollsters at NORC at the University of Chicago. The only thing that has increased in importance to those polled in the same time period is money.

When asked in 1998 whether patriotism was very important to them, 70 percent of those polled said it was. That number declined to 61 percent in 2019 and has sunk even further, to 38 percent, since then. The number of respondents who said religion was important to them in 1998 was 61 percent. Now, that number is at 39 percent. The number who said community involvement is very important has dropped to 27 percent from 62 percent in 2019, and the number of people who said having children is very important has plunged to 30 percent from 59 percent in 2019.

Pollster Bill McInturff told the Journal that the differences are dramatic and paint what he described as a “surprising portrait of a changing America.”

He added: “Perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid, and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values.”

The poll released Monday found that all age groups attached much less importance to these core American values than they did a quarter-century ago, but the decline was steepest among young respondents. In 2023, only 23 percent of those under the age of 30 said in the survey that patriotism and having children was very important to them. About 31 percent of young respondents said religion was very important to them. Among Americans 65 and older, 59 percent said patriotism was very important, and 55 percent said religion was very important to them. 

Only about one in five who took the survey said America is the greatest country in the world. About half said America is one of the greatest countries, but the number who said other countries are better rose to 27 percent from 19 percent in 2016.

Predictably, perhaps, the survey found vast gulfs between peoples’ opinions on hot-button social issues depending on the respondents’ partisan leanings.

More than half of Republicans said companies have gone too far to promote racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace, while more than half of Democrats — 61 percent — said companies have not gone far enough. Three-fourths of Republicans said society has gone too far in accepting transgender people, and half of those surveyed —  both Republicans and Democrats — said they didn’t like being asked to use bizarre or incorrect pronouns to refer to other people.

The Journal survey polled 1,019 people between March 1 and March 13, mostly online. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.