The graph shows what Americans thought the distribution of wealth in America was and what they thought would be ideal. The data is based on a 2011 survey, which was published here: http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf .
The actual United States wealth distribution was plotted against the estimated and ideal distributions across all respondents. Because of their small percentage share of total wealth, both the ‘‘4th 20%’’ value (0.2%) and the ‘‘Bottom 20%’’ value (0.1%) are not visible in the ‘‘Actual’’ distribution, i.e., the bottom 40% of Americans own about 0.3% of all wealth. Ideal distributions were what Americans thought they should be, e.g., the top 20% owning about 33%. Clearly, Americans were unaware that the top 20% of Americans own about 84% of the wealth.
The distribution graph below is based on 2016 data.
B&B orig: 4/20/19
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