Global 1% net income is $34k, it's likely that more than 19% of those who were polled make that since the median net annual income in the US is ~$50k.

Again:

> They weren't being asked "do you make more than an amputee kid in Gaza?"

Context matters.

What were they asked then?

They will have been asked something like "what income level do you believe places someone in the top 1% of American earners?" or "what percentile of American earners do you believe yourself to be in?"

Often posed as a multiple choice question.

So you're just guessing? I'd say if 19% said they believed they were in the top 1%, it was probably not specified as specifically American.

Sounds like you're guessing.

I'm not; this sort of thing is quite well documented.

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-people-underestimate-income.ht...

> Barnabas Szaszi and colleagues conducted four studies to explore how well people understand the wealth held by others. In one study, 990 US residents recruited online were asked to estimate the minimum annual household income thresholds of various percentiles of American earners.

That study shows that people are worse at estimating income brackets as the brackets increasingly become outliers. Look at how the variance in estimations increases sharply at higher brackets. That they tend to underestimate the outlier brackets doesn't indicate that 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1%...