Gallup Poll Shows Young US Men Now Rate Religion Higher Than Women

A new Gallup poll reveals that young men in the United States are now more likely than young women to consider religion very important in their lives, marking the first such reversal in 25 years of tracking. The survey, released Thursday and based on data from 2024 and 2025, found that 42 percent of men aged 18 to 29 described religion as very important to them, up from 28 percent in the 2022-2023 period. In contrast, the figure for young women held steady at about 30 percent.

This shift represents a notable departure from historical patterns. For decades, young women have reported higher levels of religiosity than their male peers, though the gap had narrowed in recent years to near parity. Gallup aggregates its findings every two years for stability, drawing from monthly telephone surveys of roughly 1,000 U.S. adults. The latest results come from interviews with 4,015 adults, including 295 young men and 145 young women, with margins of error of 7 percentage points for young men and 10 for young women.

The change is confined to adults under 30. Among those 30 and older, women continue to outpace men in viewing religion as very important. Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport,...