A new survey by Ipsos Mori has asked people in 14 different countries questions about basic social issues and demographic stats in their countries. Depressingly, they found that people have no idea what's really going on.
According to the survery, we think 21% of the UK population is Muslim, actually it's only 5%–in the US people think 15% of Americans are Muslim, the real figure is 1%. For Christians, we underestimate the number–Ipsos Mori found that British people think 39% of the population is Christian, when it's actually 59%.
In a time when all the major parties are moving closer to anti-immigration platforms it might not be surprising that we overestimate the number of immigrants in the UK by 11%–we think 24% of the UK population are immigrants, almost twice as much as the real figure of 13%.
When it comes to social issues we overestimate the number of 15-19 year olds giving birth by 13%, the number of people over 65 by 20% and the number of unemployed working age people by 17%.
At the very least, we're not the most uninformed country–that title goes to Italy, with the US coming second. The UK comes 10th, which is still nothing to be proud of.
Here's the 'Index of Ignorance'
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You can see how well you do with Ipsos-Mori's 'Perils of Perception' quiz.
