economic inequality

Oxfam's verdict on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings. 

As the Annual Meetings of the World Bank kick off in Washington this week, Oxfam welcomed the focus on inequality, but urges top officials at the institution to align their words with their actions if they are serious about combating inequality and poverty. 

“We’re very pleased to see the World Bank focus its flagship report on inequality and underscore the threat that inequality poses to fighting poverty," said the head of Oxfam International’s Washington office, Nadia Daar. 

The highly successful fight against global poverty is being lost badly in one critical area – people’s minds. A new global survey reveals that 87% of people around the world believe that global poverty has either stayed the same or gotten worse over the past 20 years, when the exact opposite is true.

Oxfam International Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, will use the WEF Africa meeting in Kigali, Rwanda this week to call for a radical overhaul in the way African countries manage the income from natural resources, an end to tax havens and the use of progressive taxation to fight inequality.

Women’s economic empowerment has the potential to transform many women’s lives for the better and support economic growth. However, the rise of extreme economic inequality is a serious blow to the fight against gender inequality and a threat to women’s rights.

The annual Forbes rich list released today highlighted a slight downturn in fortunes of the rich elite but huge global inequalities remain.

G20 Finance Ministers must support more fundamental reforms to the global tax system as part of their plans to deliver sustainable economic growth said Oxfam today.

The poorest half of the world’s population - 3.5 billion people - is responsible for just 10 percent of carbon emissions, despite being the most threatened by the catastrophic storms, droughts, and other severe weather shocks linked to climate change.  

The Credit Suisse report today shows that the number of millionaires is rising despite slowed economic Inequality is growing faster than we had thought – Oxfam predicted the richest one percent would own more than the rest of us by 2016. The fact that it has happened this year underlines the urgency of the problem.