The richest 62 people across the globe now hold as much wealth as 3.6 billion of the world’s poorest – a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago, according to an Oxfam report.
The antipoverty advocacy group published the report ahead of the annual gathering of the world’s financial and political elites in Davos.
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The report, An Economy for the 1%, says that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars (41%) since 2010, while the wealth of the richest 62 people has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion.
Almost half the mega-rich people are from the US, 17 from Europe, and the rest from countries including China, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Oxfam America president Raymond Offenheiser said: "Power and privilege are being used to rig the system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest of us to levels we have not seen before. Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being pulled upwards at an alarming rate.
"While such extreme inequality is bad for all of us, it’s the poorest among us who suffer the grimmest consequences."
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By GlobalDataOxfam is calling for urgent action to tackle the extreme inequality crisis that threatens to undermine the progress made in fighting global poverty during the last quarter of a century. Oxfam is especially calling for an end to the era of tax havens.
"Tax havens are at the core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share, depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality," continued Offenheiser.
It is estimated that globally a total of $7.6 trillion of individual’s wealth sits offshore – a twelfth of the total.
If tax would be paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190bn would be available to governments every year, the report added.
Oxfam’s report also highlighted that 9 out of 10 of this year’s World Economic Forum corporate partners have a presence in at least one tax haven and estimated that tax dodging by multinational corporations costs developing countries at least $100bn every year. Corporate investment in tax havens almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.
"Allowing governments to collect the taxes they are owed from companies and rich individuals will be vital if world leaders are to meet their new goal, set last September, to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030," authors of the report opined.
The report also revealed that although the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10% has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century.
Oxfam in its report outlined that one of the other key trends behind rising inequality report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries and a widening gap between pay at the top and the bottom of the income scale.
"Raising the minimum wage would not only help millions of Americans, but it would also pump money into the local economy and save billions in taxpayer dollars by reducing the number of low-wage workers receiving federal assistance," said Offenheiser.
"Given that a solid majority of voters across all political backgrounds support an increase, it seems an obvious thing to do, but Congress isn’t budging."
