inequality

The richest 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population put together, new Oxfam analysis of UBS data reveals today ahead of the annual UN High-Level General Debate. 

Multilateral efforts are failing to adequately respond to critical global challenges, including the climate crisis and persistent poverty and inequality. While some have blamed the deadlock solely on rising geopolitical tensions between powerful countries, such a focus is incomplete. Rather, a key reason for failures of international cooperation is extreme economic inequality. Today, the world’s richest 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity.

Responding to the Rio de Janeiro G20 Ministerial Declaration on International Tax Cooperation published today, Oxfam International’s Tax Policy Lead Susana Ruiz, said: "This is serious global progress —for the first time in history, the world’s largest economies have agreed to cooperate to tax the ultra-rich. Finally, the richest people are being told they can't game the tax system or avoid paying their fair share."
 

The richest 1 percent have amassed $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade, nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50 percent of the world’s population, according to new analysis by Oxfam today ahead of the third meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

Given the immense financing needs to achieve development goals —nearly $4 trillion annually— Oxfam supports a robust and generous IDA replenishment. But reaching a record dollar amount only makes a bigger IDA, when what is most needed is a better IDA. A better, more impactful IDA must minimize the cost of finance, but more importantly catalyze investments that reduce inequality. After all, funds like IDA remain so crucial in part because we have collectively failed to address extreme inequality within and between countries.
 

Global dividend payments to shareholders grew on average 14 times faster than worker pay in 31 countries, which together account for 81 percent of global GDP, between 2020 and 2023, reveals Oxfam’s new analysis ahead of International Workers’ Day (May 1). 

Income inequality is high or increasing in 60 percent (64 out of 106) of low- and middle-income countries receiving grants or loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, reveals new Oxfam analysis ahead of the 2024 Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. Countries with high levels of income inequality have Gini coefficients above 0.4, the warning level set by the United Nations.

EU governments are losing out on a staggering 286.5 billion euros in revenue annually, equivalent to 33 million euros per hour, due to their failure to fairly tax Europe’s wealthiest. This amount, equivalent to Finland’s GDP, represents what a European wealth tax of up to 5 percent could raise every year, according to Oxfam’s analysis. 

Oxfam welcomes the work of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) to build consensus on a set of rules to expedite debt restructuring exercises. This note lays out Oxfam’s views on the GSDR’s agenda, in response to the latest GSDR’s progress report of October 2023. 

Only 28 percent of the world’s most influential food and agriculture corporations report they are reducing their water withdrawals and just 23 percent say they are taking action to reduce water pollution. Oxfam’s new analysis of 350 corporations using World Benchmarking Alliance data comes ahead of World Water Day (March 22).