Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years
The world’s wealthiest people have been boosting their fortunes as the world slides into recession, Oxfam research shows. The collective fortunes of the super-rich have been increasing by $2.7 billion a day, the new study shows.
Over the past two years, the richest 1% have amassed close to two-thirds of all new wealth created in the world, a new report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam revealed on Monday.
According to the report, a total of $42 trillion in new wealth has been created since 2020, with $26 trillion or 63% of that being amassed by the top 1% of the super-rich. The remaining $16 trillion was shared among the rest of the world.
“A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90%,” said the report, which was released on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Billionaires’ fortunes have reportedly increased by $2.7 billion a day over the past two years. This followed a decade of historic gains, with the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the past ten years.
Oxfam’s research highlighted that billionaire wealth soared in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. It said 95 food and energy corporations had more than doubled their profits last year. At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and more than 820 million people – roughly one in ten people on Earth – are going hungry, Oxfam said.
“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires – a roaring ’20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International. She added that “taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises.”
“It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships – just the superyachts,” she concluded.
At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people —roughly one in ten people on Earth— are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world’s hungry population. The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare. Three-quarters of the world’s governments are planning austerity-driven public sector spending cuts —including on healthcare and education— by $7.8 trillion over the next five years.