Oxfam Inequality Report Highlights Wealth Divide As Davos WEF Begins

The world’s five richest men have seen their fortunes more than double since 2020, while over the same period five billion people have become poorer, according to new research published by Oxfam.

The report, released on the first day of the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland—a prominent gathering of billionaires—stipulates that the net worth of the world’s five richest individuals, all men, has shot up from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020. That is a rate equivalent to about $14 million per hour.

According to Forbes billionaire list, from which Oxfam derived its calculations, Elon Musk currently tops the ranks of the world’s wealthiest, followed by Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg.

“We’re witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom,” Oxfam International interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, wrote in the report. “This inequality is no accident; the billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else,” he added.

The research conducted by Oxfam shows that while rich countries in the Global North represent just 21 percent of the world’s population, they hold 69 percent of global wealth and are home to 74 percent of the world’s billionaire wealth. And share ownership overwhelmingly benefits the richest: the wealthiest 1 percent own 43 percent of all global financial assets.

Oxfam, the British-founded confederation of charitable organizations which is dedicated to alleviating global poverty, annually publishes an inequality report to mark the start of the Davos WEF and to underscore the gaping divide between the rich and poor. But this year’s report especially highlights the extent to which the disparity is growing at a rapid clip. Since 2020, billionaires’ wealth has increased three times faster than the rate of inflation, according to Oxfam. Meanwhile, the wages of nearly 800 million workers have failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning that these individuals have effectively collectively lost $1.5 trillion over the last two years.

In the U.S., according to the organization, billionaires are 46 percent, or $1.6 trillion, richer than they were in 2020, with the three richest US billionaires—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison—having increased their wealth by 84 percent.

“The United States is home to the most billionaires on earth, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, names that have become synonymous with obscene wealth. But it is also home to tens of millions of people who face unnecessary hardship every day as a result of despicably low wages, an unfair tax code, and meager public services, to name a few,” said Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America. “We must stop normalizing extreme inequality and take deliberate action to prevent the ultra-wealthy and the corporations they control from tightening their stranglehold on our politics and economy.”

According to Oxfam’s projections, at current rates of progress it will take 230 years to end poverty, but the world will have its first trillionaire in a decade.

One of the key findings in the report is that women are still significantly overrepresented among the poorest in society.

Globally, men own about $105 trillion more wealth than women which represents a difference in wealth equivalent to more than four times the size of the entire U.S. economy. In 2019, according to Oxfam, women earned just 51 cents for every $1 in labour income earned by men.

Oxfam also found that globally, only one in three businesses are owned by women and that out of the 1,600 largest companies in the world, fewer than a quarter have a public commitment to gender equality.

“Low wages mean that many workers toil long hours and are trapped in poverty, while persistent gender wage gaps and heavy unpaid care loads reflect a global economy that rests on the systematic exploitation of women,” the organization writes.