Last year, the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by USD 2 trillion, three times faster than in 2023, reaching USD 5.7 billion a day, according to an Oxfam report, UNN writes with reference to The Guardian.
Details
The charity's latest inequality report shows that the world is now on track to have five trillionaires within a decade, which is different from last year's prediction that there would be one trillionaire within 10 years.
The report, titled Takers Not Makers, comes as many of the world's political leaders, corporate executives and super-rich are heading to the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum on Monday.
Oxfam's study of billionaires' assets also coincides with the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Trump is expected to include several billionaires in his team of close advisors, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and to offer large-scale tax breaks to the richest US citizens.
At the same time, the number of people living below the World Bank's poverty line of $6.85 a day has remained virtually unchanged since 1990 and is approaching 3.6 billion - equivalent to 44% of the world's population today, the charity said. One in ten women live in extreme poverty (less than $2.15 a day), meaning that 24.3 million more women than men suffer from poverty.
Oxfam has warned that progress in poverty reduction has stalled, and that extreme poverty could be eradicated three times faster if inequality were reduced.
Rising stock prices on global stock exchanges explain most of the increase in billionaire wealth, although higher real estate values have also played a role. Residential real estate accounts for about 80% of global investment.
Globally, the number of billionaires increased by 204 last year to 2,769. Their combined wealth grew from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months, the second largest annual increase since records began. The wealth of the world's 10 richest people grew by an average of almost $100 million a day, and even if they lost 99% of their wealth overnight, they would still be billionaires.
They include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with a net worth of $219.4 billion, whose Amazon "empire" accounts for 70% or more of online purchases in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Aliko Dangote, with a net worth of $11 billion, is Africa's richest man, holding a "near monopoly" on cement in Nigeria and dominating the market across Africa, the report says.
The report argues that most wealth is received rather than earned, with 60% coming either through inheritance, "nepotism and corruption" or monopoly power. It estimates that 18% of wealth comes from monopoly power.
According to Forbes' real-time billionaires list, the richest people in the world are Musk, Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and Meta, Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault. At Trump's inauguration on Monday, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are expected to sit side by side, a sign of the rapidly growing influence of technology companies on politics, the newspaper writes.
Oxfam is calling for bold solutions to "radically reduce inequality and harden equity in our economy.
Anna Marriott, Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: "Last year we predicted that the first trillionaire might emerge within a decade, but this shocking acceleration in wealth accumulation means the world is now on track for at least five. The global economic system is broken, completely unusable, as it allows and perpetuates this explosion of wealth while nearly half of humanity continues to live in poverty.