Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
7 Figures: Millennials’ Views of American Institutions
7 Figures: Millennials’ Views of American Institutions
Jan 20, 2026 6:03 AM

A new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data shows that younger generations tend to have more-positive views than their elders on a number of institutions that play a significant role in American society.

Here are 7 figures you should know from the report:

1. Millennials’ rating of churches and other religious organizations dropped 18 percentage points from 2010 to 2015. In 2010, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) said churches have a positive impact on the country; today, only 55 percent make that same claim.

2. As of 2015, 86 percent of Millennials say small businesses have a positive effect, up 15 points since 2010.

3. Evaluations of large corporations have similarly improved among Millennials (an increase from 28 to 38 percent), though they also remain more negative than positive.

4. Five years ago, just 35 percent of Millennials said banks had a positive impact on the nation; today 45 percent say the impact of banks is positive.

5. Labor unions are also seen more positively today than they were five years ago (45 percent now say they have a positive impact on the country, up from 32 percent in 2010). And Millennials remain much more likely than their elders to view unions positively.

6. While about half of Americans (48 percent) view the energy industry as having a positive impact on the country, this view is somewhat mon among those in younger generations than older: 54 percent of Millennials and 52 percent of Xers say pared with just 42 percent of Boomers and 35 percent of Silents.

7. In 2010, four-in-ten Millennials said the national news media was having a positive impact on the way things were going in the country. Now, just 27 percent say it has a positive pared with 26 percent of Generation Xers and Silents and 23 percent of Boomers.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
North Koreans face new challenges after they defect
They faced potential starvation, imprisonment, torture, and made a dangerous journey to freedom only to discover new struggles that they never could prehended in their former lives. Stories and reports of North Koreans fleeing their country aren’t particularly unusual. There are dozens of books written by or about North Korean defectors. Last week, thirteen North Koreans who worked for a restaurant fled to South Korea. It’s also been recently reported that a high-ranking colonel from North Korean military’s General Reconnaissance...
Lex Luthor, Capitalist Villain
In an earlier post pared the political economy of superheroes in the DC and Marvel universes. And today I have a piece up at The Stream examining the figure of Lex Luthor, the crony capitalist villain featured in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. As I write in that piece, Luthor is certainly more than a crony capitalist, but he is not less than one, and it is this corruption of democratic capitalism that serves as a backdrop for his...
A Papal Revolution
This year marks the 125th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum and the beginning of the modern Catholic social encyclical tradition. In this landmark text, Leo courageously set out to examine the “new things” of his time, especially the changes associated with the Industrial Revolution. These included the emergence of an urbanized working class, the breakdown of old social hierarchies, and the rise of capitalism as well as ideologies such as socialism, munism, and corporatism. On April 20,...
Audio: Samuel Gregg Revisits Regensburg
Samuel GreggOn Monday evening, Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined host Sheila Liaugminas on Relevant Radio’s A Closer Look to examine Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address as we approach the tenth anniversary of its delivery. Greggemphasizes the fact that our understanding of who God is and what his nature is has important implications for how we understand human liberty and rationality, and argues that as western nations have gradually abandoned the Christian religious principles that formerly undergirded their...
Tesla Motors Releases a Car for the Masses That Runs on Coal
Electric cars are not a new invention, nor are they as popular as they once were. (They debuted in 1890 and by 1900 electric cars accounted for around a third of all vehicles on the road.) But over the past decade, thanks to Elon Musk and Tesla Motors, electric cars have e much more interesting. Tesla rolled out the first fully electric sports car in 2008 and a fully electric luxury sedan in 2012. And earlier this month they unveiled...
Rev. Sirico: Pope Francis’s Love Letter to the Family
“What the pope has brought forth is honest, timely and sensitive,” writes Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute. “Amoris Laetitia explores plicated pastoral situations that any confessor will know all too well: challenges of how weak and fallen people can authentically live the faith.” In the Detroit News, Rev. Sirico discusses Pope Francis’s love letter to the family: The pope’s reflections are aimed at how to make a solid moral discernment in the midst of...
Money and Moral Absolutes
In medieval Europe merchants would often writeDeus enim et proficuum (“For God and Profit”) in the upper corners of their accounting ledgersorA nome di Dio e guadangnio (“In the Name of God and Profit”) on partnership contracts. These words reflected their authors’ conviction that banking and finance were economically useful endeavors,saysSamuel Greggin this week’s Acton Commentary. Luis Molina and the many other Christians who explored these areas throughout history were not searching for greater marketplace effi­ciencies. Their concern was moral....
Leftist Shareholders Attack Corporate Free Speech
On its website, Trinity Health trumpets its shareholder activism. Based in Livonia, Mich., the Catholic health care provider boasts operations in 21 states, which includes 90 hospitals and 120 long-term care facilities. For this last, Trinity should be lauded. For the first, however, your writer is left shaking his head. Among Trinity’s list of five shareholder advocacy priorities, two stand out: • uphold the dignity of the human person. • enable access to health care. In other words, issues any...
Roundup: Samuel Gregg on Pope Francis and Overpopulation, Pope Leo XIII and Modernity, and Constitutional Conservatism
New articles from the indefatigable Samuel Gregg, research director of the Acton Insitute: Amoris Laetitia: Another Nail in the “Overpopulation” Coffin, The Catholic World Report Here the pope signals his awareness of the efforts of various organizations—the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, particular US administrations—to push anti-natalist policies upon developing nations. A Revolutionary Pope for Revolutionary Times, Crisis Magazine Between 1878 and 1903, Leo issued an astonishing 85 encyclicals. Many dealt squarely with the political, social, and...
4 Reasons to Support School Choice from Pope Francis’s ‘Amoris Laetitia’
Pope Francis’s recently released apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitiahas received considerable attention because of the issue of divorce munion. But the 60,000+ word document has much more to say about family life than the dissolution of marriage. For example, it provides pelling reasons for all Christians (not just Catholics) to support school choice. The term “school choice” refers to programs that give parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend, whether public, private, parochial, or homeschool. While...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved