davos

Global wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small wealthy elite. This briefing explains Oxfam’s methodology and data sources and updates key inequality statistics.

Wealthy elites have co-opted political power to rig the rules of the economic game, undermining democracy and creating a world where the 85 richest people own the wealth of half of the world’s population, worldwide development organization Oxfam warns in a report published today. 

Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

An explosion in extreme wealth and income is exacerbating inequality and hindering the world’s ability to tackle poverty, Oxfam warned today in a briefing published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.

Leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week should seriously consider how the economic crisis can be a catalyst for new models of growth and a new way of doing business.