But the issues have switched places in just a few months’ time. In the latest poll, 17 percent named terrorism or the war, while 37 percent named the economy or the job market. (Another 16 percent listed an issue like energy or health care that is closely related to the economy.)

When looking at the current state of their own finances, Americans remain relatively sanguine. More than 70 percent said that their financial situation was fairly good or very good, a number that has dropped only modestly since 2006.

Yet many say they are merely managing to stay in place, rather than get ahead. This view is consistent with the income statistics of the past five years, which suggest that median household income has still not returned to the inflation-adjusted peak it hit in 1999. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, there has never been an extended economic expansion that ended without setting a new record for household income.

Economists cite a variety of factors for the sluggish income growth, including technology and globalization, and it clearly seems to have made Americans anxious about the future. Fewer than half of parents  46 percent  said they expected their children to enjoy a better standard of living than they themselves do, down from 56 percent in 2005.

Respondents were more pessimistic when asked broadly about the next generation, with only a third saying it would live better than people do today. (Polls usually find people to be more upbeat about their personal situation than about the state of society, but the gap is now larger than usual.)

Charles Parrish, a 56-year-old retired fireman in Evans, Ga., who now works a maintenance job for the local school system, said that he was worried the country was not preparing children for the high-technology economy of the future. Instead, the government passed a stimulus package that simply sends checks to taxpayers and worsens the deficit in the process.

“Who’s going to pay back the money?” Mr. Parrish, an independent, said. “We are. They are giving me money except I’m going to have to pay interest on it.”