Americans might think they know how bad inequality is, but it turns out they actually have no idea.
A new study conducted at Harvard Business School found that Americans believe CEOs make roughly 30 times what the average worker makes in the U.S., when in actuality they are making more than 350 times the average worker. “Americans drastically underestimated the gap in actual incomes between CEOs and unskilled workers,” the study says.
But that underestimation isn’t merely drastic—it is also unmatched in the world. The gap between Americans’ perception and reality is the most among any of the 16 countries for which the researchers measured both the perceived and actual pay inequality.