By Collin Binkley and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

December 6, 2021

Isolation. Anxiety. Uncertainty. The stresses of the coronavirus pandemic have taken a toll on Americans of all ages, but a new poll finds that teens and young adults have faced some of the heaviest struggles as they come of age during a time of extreme turmoil.

Overall, more than a third of Americans ages 13 to 56 cite the pandemic as a major source of stress, and many say it has made certain parts of their lives harder. But when it comes to education, friendships and dating, the disruption has had a pronounced impact among Generation Z, according to a new survey from MTV Entertainment Group and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Among Americans in Gen Z — the survey included ages 13 to 24 — 46% said the pandemic has made it harder to pursue their education or career goals, compared with 36% of Millennials and 31% in Generation X. There was a similar gap when it came to dating and romantic relationships, with 40% of Gen Z saying it became harder.

Forty-five percent of Gen Z also reported greater difficulty maintaining good relationships with friends, compared with 39% of Gen X Americans. While many Millennials also said friendships were harder, Gen Z was less likely than Millennials to say the pandemic actually made that easier, 18% vs. 24%.

Roughly half of Americans across generations, including Gen Z, said the pandemic led to struggles having fun and maintaining mental health.

The findings are consistent with what health and education experts are seeing. After months of remote schooling and limited social interaction, teens and young adults are reporting higher rates of depression and anxiety. Many are also coping with academic setbacks suffered during online schooling.

The outsized impact on children and adolescents is partly linked to where they are in their brain development, said Dr. Cora Breuner, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Those periods are when humans see the most growth in executive function — the complex mental skills needed to navigate daily life.

“It’s this perfect storm where you have isolated learning, decreased social interaction with peers, and parents who also are struggling with similar issues,” Breuner said. It means that, while young people are falling behind in school, they’re also behind on the skills needed to cope with stress and make decisions, she added.

For 16-year-old Ivy Enyenihi, just thinking about last school year is hard. While her parents continued working in person, she spent day after day alone at their home in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her high school’s online classes included live interaction with a teacher just two days a week, leaving her totally isolated most days.

“I’m a very social person, and so not having people around was probably what made it the hardest,” Enyenihi said. “It just made normal things hard to do. And it definitely made me depressed.”

By the spring semester, she was skipping assignments and doing the bare minimum to get by. She felt cut off from the classmates and teachers at her school.

Things have improved since she returned to in-person classes this year, but she’s still catching up on math lessons she missed last year, and she wonders if she’s done enough to stand out on college applications. Overall, the sense of isolation has faded, but its memory lingers.

“It’s still a part of me,” she said. “If I think of it, it comes back up.”

Uncertainty around the pandemic this fall was a top concern across generations, with 35% citing it as a major source of stress. Another 29% said the fear of getting COVID-19 was a serious stressor.

Tanner Boggs, 21, says the pandemic has shaken up nearly every aspect of his life. The senior at the University of South Carolina says his academics, his mental health and his physical health all took hits.

He spent most of last school year in the bedroom of his apartment, with waning motivation to keep up with online classes. Some days he would wake up only to log into a Zoom lecture and then crawl back into bed. His anxieties worsened until tasks like going to the grocery store became unbearable.

He rarely went out but still ended up getting COVID-19 from a roommate, leaving him with symptoms that he still suffers from, he said.

After getting vaccinated and returning to in-person classes, his academics and mental health have improved. But some friendships seem to have faded, he said, and parts of his life are changed forever.

“The best I can describe it is tragic,” Boggs said. “It has affected every aspect of my life from relationships with friends and peers to the way I get groceries. Just everything.”

Compared with other generations, Gen Z is most likely to see education as a core part of their identity, according to the survey. About two-thirds in Gen Z said it was very or extremely important to their identity, compared to half of Millennials and about 4 in 10 in Gen X.

It’s no surprise that young people see education as a potential obstacle, said Vilmaris González, who manages youth programs for the nonprofit Education Trust in Tennessee. As many confront learning setbacks, they’re also emerging into a world where the future of work and higher education are as uncertain as ever, she said.

“I’m sure we won’t understand the gravity of those impacts for years to come,” she said. “This is going to mark their generation forever.”

For some, the pandemic has been a time to rethink future plans. Before, Gabi Hartinger, 21, was studying to become a teacher. But the last year brought life-changing turmoil — her father spent more than 40 days hospitalized with COVID-19, and her own isolation and anxiety led her to seek mental health counseling.

Now, Hartinger, a senior at the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri, hopes to become a school counselor to help younger students coping with their own challenges.

“For a lot of high schoolers I knew, school during the pandemic was a big struggle,” she said. “I think that that kind of changed my view on what I want to do when I get out of here.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 3,764 teens ages 13-17 and adults ages 18-56 was conducted Sept. 1-19 using a combined sample of interviews from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population, and interviews from opt-in online panels. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. The AmeriSpeak panel is recruited randomly using address-based sampling methods, and respondents later were interviewed online or by phone.

By Christopher Rugaber and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

December 9, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ overall income has accelerated since the pandemic, but so has inflation — and a new poll finds that far more people are noticing the higher prices than the pay gains.

Two-thirds say their household costs have risen since the pandemic, compared with only about a quarter who say their incomes have increased, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Half say their incomes have stayed the same. Roughly a quarter report that their incomes have dropped.

The fast-rising prices that have been surging through the economy have forced many Americans to change their spending habits. About one-third say, for example, that they’re driving less often, and roughly 3 in 10 Americans say they’re buying less meat than they usually do. In the past year, gas prices have jumped nearly 50%, and the cost of meat is up 15%.

Most people say the sharply higher prices for goods and services in recent months have had at least a minor effect on their financial lives, including about 4 in 10 who say the hit has been substantial. The poll confirms that the burden has been especially hard on low-income households.

On Friday, when the government will issue its latest reading on consumer prices, it’s expected to report that inflation soared 6.7% in November compared with a year earlier, according to economists surveyed by data provider FactSet. That would top October’s 6.2% year-over-year increase and would mark the highest consumer inflation rate in nearly four decades.

The findings in the AP-NORC poll underscore the financial pressures that this year’s spike in inflation has imposed on many Americans’ finances. Still, as they have since before the pandemic struck in March 2020, a majority say their own finances remain good.

Yet many Americans have soured on the economy in the past year, even though most economic indicators point to a still-steady recovery, with near-record job openings, solid retail spending and a rebound in manufacturing. Only about one-third say the economy is “good,” down from about half who said so in March. That may illustrate why President Joe Biden hasn’t benefited politically from positive readings on the economy.

The poll, though, finds a sharp partisan split: Only about 1 in 10 Republicans describe the economy as “good”; more than half of Democrats say so. Yet when asked about their own financial situations, people are more positive and less divided along party lines. About two-thirds of Americans say their personal finances are in good shape. Roughly 7 in 10 Democrats and about 6 in 10 Republicans say so.

Analysts generally expect the economy to grow at a brisk 7% annual rate in the final three months of this year, boosting growth for all of 2021 to its fastest calendar-year pace since 1984. The unemployment rate has dwindled to 4.2%, from 6.7% a year ago. And with many employers struggling to hire, the economy still has nearly 4 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic.

U.S. households, on average, are earning higher incomes than they did before the pandemic. Wages and salaries grew 4.2% in September compared with a year earlier, the largest annual increase in two decades of records. And the government provided a $1,400 stimulus check to all households in March as well as a $300-a-week unemployment aid supplement from March to September. Most households with children began receiving the $300 monthly child tax credit in July.

Those government measures, combined with higher paychecks, lifted Americans’ overall household incomes by 5.9% in October compared with a year earlier. Yet inflation jumped to 6.2% that month, the highest reading in three decades, negating the income gain.

Jason Furman, President Barack Obama’s former top economic adviser, suggested that many people don’t think about government payments, such as stimulus checks, when considering their own incomes because those payments are generally one-time windfalls.

A likely factor in Americans’ worries about inflation is that rising prices have been concentrated in highly visible categories: The poll finds that 85% say they paid higher-than-usual prices for food and gas in recent months. Nearly 6 in 10 say the same about electricity. About 4 in 10 say they bought appliances recently and that the prices were higher than normal.

The effect is even more pronounced among middle- and lower-income Americans: Half of people in households earning less than $50,000 a year say the price increases have had a major impact on their finances. Only a third of those in households earning more than $50,000 say the same.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,089 adults was conducted Dec. 2-7 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

By Barbara Ortutay | The Associated Press

December 14, 2021

When it comes to household duties such as changing diapers, handling chores and meals and managing family schedules and activities, many couples who don’t have children expect that they will more or less share the work equally should they have kids one day.

The reality is not quite so rosy — at least for mothers.

A new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that although women generally expect to do more in their household, Americans without children are still more optimistic that they would share responsibilities equally with a partner compared with what parents report actually happens. That’s true even when factors such as the age of respondents are taken into account.

The poll asked about eight specified household responsibilities and found that 35% of mothers report doing more than their partner for all eight, compared with just 3% of fathers who report the same. For instance, about half of mothers said they are completely or mostly responsible for providing transportation to their kids, while only about a quarter of fathers said they are responsible for all or most of it.

By contrast, majorities of both men and women who are not parents said that if they did have kids they’d share equally in things like providing transportation, changing diapers and attending to children waking up at night.

Mothers and fathers had different ideas about who does the bulk of household chores. For instance, 21% of mothers said they and their partner both equally attend to children if they wake up at night, while 49% of fathers said the same thing. So who is right?

“When you look at time use data, women are more correct than men,” said Yana Gallen, assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, who worked on the poll.

Life can also complicate the best-laid plans. Liana Price, 35, who has a 4-month-old baby who came as a “very much wanted surprise” during the height of the coronavirus pandemic when Price was undergoing chemotherapy treatments on her hands and had a pregnancy complication, said she stopped working in January as a result of everything going on.

“Things just kind of changed very drastically. And suddenly for us, we didn’t really have like a plan,” Price said. While Price and her husband had planned to both work full time, with her taking maternity leave offered by her job as a registered nurse, instead she quit her job and they began to run through savings.

Still, she says she and her husband divide child care equally — including attending to night wakings.

“When I was breastfeeding, there was no point in him getting up in the middle of the night. But now that I’m formula feeding, we alternate nights,” she said. “However, during the day my husband does work from home. He travels, too. So when he travels, obviously everything is on me.”

Experts say one reason women report doing more house and child care work is not only because they actually do more — which is often true — but also because men are not always aware of all the work involved. That includes planning family activities and organizing appointments and even things like providing children with emotional support.

The poll found that 57% of mothers said they provide “all or most” emotional support to their children. Only 1% of mothers said that their partner does. In contrast, 10% of fathers said they are the primary provider of emotional support to their kids, while 24% said it’s their partner.

Much has been said about the effects of the pandemic on women, including many women who left or stepped back from the labor force to take care of their children or aging parents. The U.S. lost tens of millions of jobs when states began shuttering huge swaths of the economy after COVID-19 erupted. But as the economy has quickly rebounded and employers have posted record-high job openings, many women have delayed a return to the workplace, willingly or otherwise.

In the spring of 2020, roughly 3.5 million mothers with school-age children either lost jobs, took leaves of absence or left the labor market altogether, according to an analysis by the Census Bureau. Many have not returned. A recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that one in three women over the past year had thought about leaving their jobs or “downshifting” their careers. Early in the pandemic, by contrast, the study’s authors said, just one in four women had considered leaving.

“But another thing that happened during the pandemic is a lot more jobs became remote and working from home became OK with a lot of jobs,” Gallen said. “So I think that actually really helps women in the workplace because a potentially big problem has been that, women don’t feel like they can take some of the higher-paying jobs available” that involve travel or long hours away from home.

“So this pandemic kind of moved forward a shift to more female friendly conditions and many jobs,” she said.

This includes schedule flexibility and, for jobs in which that’s possible, remote work. Women are more likely than men to say flexibility at work is important when thinking about whether or not to have a child, 74% versus 66%, according to the poll.

It’s not just the division of household responsibilities that having kids can throw into a loop. It’s been well documented that having children can hinder women’s careers, both when it comes to pay when compared with men (including men with children) and advancing to better jobs.

According to the poll, 47% of women say having a child is an obstacle for job security at their current or most recent job, compared with 36% of men. Americans under 30 were especially likely to say that, compared with older adults.

Amy Hill, who is 31 and lives in West Virginia, said she’s happy with her home division of labor, even though she does more than her husband. That’s because he works in the coal mines, doing 16-hour shifts away from home. Her work, while steady, is not full time — she does makeup for proms, weddings and other events.

“I think it helps not being around each other a whole lot because I miss him when he’s gone, you know?” she said. “As long as we’ve been together, he’s been working underground. And also, he doesn’t really fold the towels the way I want them to be folded.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,054 adults was conducted Oct. 7-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

By Luis Andres Henao, Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, and David Crary | The Associated Press

December 14, 2021

Nathalie Charles, even in her mid-teens, felt unwelcome in her Baptist congregation, with its conservative views on immigration, gender and sexuality. So she left.

“I just don’t feel like that gelled with my view of what God is and what God can be,” said Charles, an 18-year-old of Haitian descent who identifies as queer and is now a freshman at Princeton University.

“It wasn’t a very loving or nurturing environment for someone’s faith.”

After leaving her New Jersey church three years ago, she identified as atheist, then agnostic, before embracing a spiritual but not religious life. In her dorm, she blends rituals at an altar, chanting Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu mantras and paying homage to her ancestors as she meditates and prays.

The path taken by Charles places her among the religiously unaffiliated — the fastest-growing group in surveys asking Americans about their religious identity. They describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”

According to a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, this group — commonly known as the “nones” — now constitutes 29% of American adults. That’s up from 23% in 2016 and 19% in 2011.

“If the unaffiliated were a religion, they’d be the largest religious group in the United States,” said Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University who wrote a book about the spiritual lives of the nones.

The religiously unaffiliated were once concentrated in urban, coastal areas, but now live across the U.S., representing a diversity of ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, Drescher said.

Even in their personal philosophies, America’s nones vary widely, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. For example, 30% say they feel some connection to God or a higher power, and 19% say religion has some importance to them even though they have no religious affiliation.

About 12% describe themselves as religious and spiritual and 28% as spiritual but not religious. More than half describe themselves as neither.

Nearly 60% of the nones say religion was at least somewhat important to their families when they were growing up, according to the AP-NORC poll. It found that 30% of nones meditate and 26% pray privately at least a few times a month, while smaller numbers consult periodically with a religious or spiritual leader.

“There are people who do actually practice, either in a particular faith tradition that we would recognize, or in multiple faith traditions,” Drescher said. “They’re not interested in either membership in those communities formally or in identifying as someone from that religion.”

Over recent years, the prevalence of the nones in the U.S. has been roughly comparable to Western Europe — but overall, Americans remain more religious, with higher rates of daily prayer and belief in God as described in the Bible. According to a 2018 Pew survey, about two-thirds of U.S. Christians prayed daily, compared to 6% in Britain and 9% in Germany

The growth of the nones in the U.S. has come largely at the expense of the Protestant population in the U.S., according to the new Pew survey. It said 40% of U.S. adults are Protestants now, down from 50% a decade ago.

Among the former Protestants is Shianda Simmons, 36, of Lakeland, Florida, who began identifying as an atheist in 2013.

She grew up as a Baptist and attended church regularly; she says she left mainly because of the church’s unequal treatment of women.

Not everyone in her family knows she has forsaken religion, and some who do know struggle to accept it, Simmons said.

“There are certain people I can’t tell that I am atheist,” she said. “It has made me draw away from my family.”

Similarly, at the beauty store she owns, she feels she must keep her atheism “under wraps” from clients, for fear they’d go elsewhere.

Like Simmons, Mandisa Thomas is a Black atheist — an identity that can be challenging in the many African American communities where churches are a powerful force. Thomas sang in a church choir in her childhood, but was not raised Christian.

“Within the Black community, we face ostracism,” said Thomas, who lives near Atlanta and founded Black Nonbelievers, a support group, in 2011. “There is this idea that somehow you are rejecting your blackness when you reject religion, that atheism is something that white people do.”

Another advocate for the nones is Kevin Bolling, who grew up in a military family and served as a Roman Catholic altar boy. In college, he began to question the church’s role, and grew dismayed about its position on sexuality after he came out as gay.

He’s now executive director of the Secular Student Alliance, which has more than 200 branches in colleges and schools nationwide. The chapters, he said, serve as havens for secular students or those questioning their faith.

“I think this generation can be the first generation to be majority non-religious versus majority religious,” he said.

Being Catholic also was a big part of Ashley Taylor’s upbringing — she became an altar server at 9. Now 30, she identifies as religiously unaffiliated.

“It just means finding meaning and maybe even spirituality without practicing a religion …. pulling from whatever makes sense to me or whatever fits with my values,” she said.

Her faith gave her strength when she had cancer at 11, she said, but she also feels that growing up Catholic negatively affected her emotional and sexual development and delayed her coming out as queer.

Eventually, Taylor discovered Sunday Assembly, which provided her with a congregation-like community but in a secular way, offering activities such as singing, book clubs and trivia nights. She’s now board president at Sunday Assembly Pittsburgh.

“They’re not trying to tell you what’s true,” said Taylor. “There’s always a spirit of curiosity and questioning and openness.”

For some nones, such as 70-year-old Zayne Marston of Shelburne, Massachusetts, their spiritual journey keeps evolving over decades.

Growing up near Boston, Marston attended a Congregational church with his family – he remembers Bible study, church-sponsored dances, the itchiness of his flannel trousers while attending Sunday services.

Through high school and college, he “drifted away” from Christian beliefs and in his 30s began a serious, long-lasting journey into spirituality while in rehab to curb his alcoholism.

“Spirituality is a soul-based journey into the heart, surrendering one’s ego will to a higher will.” he said. “We’re looking for our own answers, beyond the programming we received growing up.”

His path has been rough at times – the death of his wife from a fast-moving cancer, financial troubles leading to the loss of his house – but he says his spiritual practice has replaced his anxieties with a “gentle joy” and a desire to help others.

He previously worked as a landscape designer and real estate appraiser, and now runs a school teaching qigong, a practice that evolved from China combining slow, relaxed movement with breathing exercises and meditation.

“As a kid, I used to think of God up on a throne, with a white beard, passing judgment, but that has totally changed,” Marston said. “My higher power is the universe… It’s always there for me, if I can get out of my ego’s way.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,083 adults was conducted Oct. 21-25 using a sample drawn designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The Pew survey was conducted among 3,937 respondents from May 29 to Aug. 25. It’s margin of error for the full sample of respondents is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

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Associated Press Writer Mariam Fam contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By Farnoush Amiri | The Associated Press

December 16, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — There are plenty of reasons for Sebastian Garcia to feel downbeat about the future.

After his family immigrated from Mexico, he was raised on a farm in northwest Texas, where he says there aren’t many racial slurs he hasn’t heard. When the now-24-year-old graduated from college, he decided to become an educator. But the first few years of his teaching career have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced his public school system to close for months.

Garcia and his peers, meanwhile, have had to navigate the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, weighed down by student loans that have made affordable housing and access to healthcare out of reach.

Despite the challenges of what Garcia describes as the endless pursuit of the American Dream, he says he’s confident that better things are ahead. He’s part of a broader trend among millennials and Generation Z Americans who say they are more likely to be optimistic about the future and their ability to create change than their older counterparts, according to a new poll from MTV and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll measured attitudes among Gen Z Americans ages 13 through 24, as well as 25- to 40-year-old millennials and 41- to 56-year-old Gen X Americans.

“I know that as long as there are people willing to work hard and push through the hard times, you can persevere,” Garcia said. “Me and my family are proven facts of that.”

The poll finds 66% of Gen Z and 63% of millennial Americans think their generation is motivated to make positive change, compared with 56% of Gen X Americans. Those generations are also more likely than Generation X to feel they can impact what the government does, with 44% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials saying they can at least a moderate amount, compared with only 31% of Gen X.

For Jonathan Belden, 29, being optimistic about the future and potential for positive change is necessary as a father of five.

“Despite the challenges, in many regards, the U.S. is the only place where we have as much of an opportunity without hindrance,” the New Mexico resident said. “And I want my kids to grow up in a place where they can succeed at whatever they do.”

While members of all three of these generations have mixed views of the state of the country and the future, the poll shows Gen Z and millennials are not as negative about the world that their generation is facing.

Despite the fact that millennials, some of whom are now creeping toward middle age, are reaching milestones like marriage, parenthood and homeownership later in life than previous generations, close to half of them reported that their standard of living is better than their parents’ at the same age. For Gen Z, about half likewise think their standard of living is better than what their parents had, while just about a quarter think it is worse.

Additionally, about half of Gen Z and millennials say the world they face is worse than other generations, compared with about 6 in 10 Gen X.

Along with less pessimism and motivation to create change, many Gen Z and millennials put stock in progressive policies aimed at race, class and gender disparities.

Roughly half of Gen Z and millennials say they favor a universal basic income, while about a quarter are opposed. Among Gen X, about a third are in favor and roughly as many are against.

About 3 in 10 Gen Z and millennials favor reducing funding for law enforcement agencies, while about 4 in 10 are opposed. Opposition is much higher among Gen X, with 56% against.

And while few across the three generations oppose prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of gender identity, millennials and Gen Z are more likely than Gen X to support that policy.

Despite a clear divide in policy attitudes, Gen Z and millennials are more optimistic than Gen X that Americans can come together and work out their political differences (45% and 41%, compared with 33%).

“Where I find the most hope is when I talk to people and we find the common ground,” Belden said. “When that happens, even if there are differences, it helps me to feel like there is actually good in people and in the world and that it’s not going to hell in a handbasket.”

Garcia agreed, saying that while the past few years have been hard, “I know eventually one day, maybe not today, maybe not next year, but we will eventually overcome it.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 3,764 teens ages 13-17 and adults ages 18-56 was conducted Sept. 1-19 using a combined sample of interviews from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population, and interviews from opt-in online panels. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. The AmeriSpeak panel is recruited randomly using address-based sampling methods, and respondents later were interviewed online or by phone.