80% of Americans own just 7% of the country's wealth

Spencer Platt/Getty

New York City, home of some of the wealthiest people in the US.

In a 2011 study, Harvard business professor Mike Norton and economist Dan Ariely asked over 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth was distributed in the US, and what the ideal distribution looks like.

Most participants were far from understanding the extent of income inequality, which is not surprising considering the incomprehensibly wide wealth gap that exists.

To bring the study's findings to life, YouTube user politizane created a video that presents the data in several eye-opening graphics.

Here is one of the more shocking charts, which reveals that the bottom 80% of Americans have just 7% of the nation's wealth:

YouTube/politizane

What's more, the top 1% own 40% of the country's wealth:

YouTube/politizane

These stats surprised the majority of the participants. Here's a chart that shows what they thought the distribution of wealth was, what 92% of them chose as the ideal distribution, and what the actual distribution looks like:

YouTube/politizane

Check out the full video and more revealing statistics: