(Bloomberg) -- The retirement savings accumulated by just 100chief executives are equal to theentire retirement accounts of 41 percent of U.S. families--or morethan 116 million people, a new study finds.

In a report scheduled for release today, the Center forEffective Government and Institute for Policy Studies found thatthe 100 largest chief executive retirement funds areworth an average of about $49.3 million per executive, or acombined $4.9 billion.

David C. Novak, the recently departed chief executive officer ofYum! Brands Inc., is at the top of the list, with total retirementsavings of $234.2 million.

In recent years, pay and income inequality across differentincome groups have received increasing attention in the U.S.

Read: 10 scary retirementstatistics

Significantly less attention has been focused on the growinggulf in retirement savings, a lack of focus that the study’sauthors say they are attempting to address.

“This CEO-to-worker retirement gap is a lot bigger than the paygap and one more indicator of the extreme level of inequality thatis really tearing the country apart,” said Sarah Anderson, thereport’s co-author and the global economy project director at theInstitute for Policy Studies.

Read: Retirement fears keep a third of Americans upat night

Some of the chief executives with the biggest retirement stashesare at companies that have cut retirement benefits for newemployees.

Leucadia National

Leucadia National Corp., the holding company that ownsinvestment banking firm Jefferies Group Inc., last year cut by halfits matching 401(k) contributions for employees hired after January2014.

Those hired prior to that date receive a match of as much as 3percent of employees’ income; new employees get a match of up to1.5 percent.

Leucadia CEO Richard B. Handler ranked second on the list ofbiggest retirement assets among executives, with $201.3 million.Except for a $219,739 pension benefit, all of the assets aredeferred compensation.

“Mr. Handler does not have a retirement package, goldenparachute, or even an employment contract," said Richard Khaleel, aLeucadia spokesman.

“Mr. Handler has voluntarily deferred most of his cumulativecompensation over the past 25 years and kept the vast majority ofthat deferred compensation invested alongside shareholders ofJefferies and, now, Leucadia, in those companies’ commonshares. With the exception of charitable donations andtax-payment sales, Mr. Handler has never sold a share of Jefferiesor Leucadia."

Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, used tooffer pensions to most workers but eliminated that option foremployees who joined after 2002, replacing it with 401(k)plans.

Novak’s deferred compensation “was directly linked to theperformance of the company and primarily consists of bonuses heearned and deferred into YUM stock, which appreciated 900 percentduring his leadership,” said Jonathan Blum, the company’s chiefpublic affairs officer.

“He chose to defer the majority of his compensation in YUM stockas he believes in the long-term growth of the company.”

As for the changes to retirement plans for the rank and file, hecalled the company’s 401(k) plan “among the best in theindustry.”

The company is rated"above average" in its matching contributionbut "poor" in its employee participation rate by BrightScope, a SanDiego firm that evaluates 401(k)s.

McKesson’s Hammergren

The study contrasted the difference between the retirementsavings of executives and the workers at various companies. At Yum,for example, employees with a 401(k) have an average balance of$70,167. Novak’s retirement savings is about 3,300 times higherthan that average.

John Hammergren, the CEO of McKesson Corp., the medical productscompany, ranked fifth on the list, with total retirement savings of$145.5 million, according to the study.

Following complaints from activist investors last year, heagreed to reduce his pension and cap its value. The company frozeits pension for current employees at the end of 1996 and closed itto new employees hired in 1997.

Kristin Hunter, a spokeswoman for McKesson, declined to commenton the fairness of the company’s retirement savings plans.

For many chief executives, the bulk of their pay often used forretirement comes from deferred compensation plans that permitexecutives to set aside salaries and bonuses on a pretax basis,with no limits.

Lower-paid employees with 401(k) accounts can only set aside$18,000 a year and an additional $5,000 if they’re 50 or older.

Many companies offer different investment options to executivesfor their deferred compensation plans than those offered to 401(k)participants.

In addition to deferred compensation plans, about 30 percent ofFortune 1000 companies in 2013 offered supplemental executiveretirement plans, usually calculated by multiplying years ofservice and the average pay earned during executives’ final yearsof service.

‘Wealth generators’

"These benefits weren’t originally intended to be huge wealthgenerators but they’ve become that as CEO compensation has grown to200 to 300 times what average workers make," said Gary Hewitt,director of governance research at Sustainalytics in Amsterdam,which provides research to investors.

"They’re harder to justify as companies have abandoned workerpensions."

The report’s authors called for a number of policy changes,including applying to executive compensation plans the same annualcontribution limits that cover 401(k) plans and preventingcompanies from deducting from their taxes contributions toexecutive pension plans if the employee pensions have beenfrozen.

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