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The 1,000 richest people on the planet recouped their COVID-19 losses within just nine months, but it could take more than a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, reveals a new Oxfam report today. "The Inequality Virus" is being published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Davos Agenda’.

Oxfam International and Oxfam Intermón met with the Prime Minister of Spain.

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade.

Today, Oxfam publishes “Takers Not Makers” as business elites gather in the Swiss resort town of Davos and, billionaire Donald Trump backed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is inaugurated as President of the United States. The report shows that globally, billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, at a rate three times faster than the previous year.

Billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. An average of nearly four new billionaires were minted every week. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023. At least five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. Inequality is out of control.

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer, reveals a new Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power. If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth. 

For every new billionaire created during the pandemic — one every 30 hours — nearly a million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2022 at nearly the same rate, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. “Profiting from Pain” is published as the World Economic Forum — the exclusive get-together of the global elite in Davos — takes place for the first time face-to-face since COVID-19, a period during which billionaires have enjoyed a huge boost to their fortunes. 

A group of over 100 millionaires and billionaires from nine countries published today an open letter to government and business leaders, calling for permanent annual wealth taxes on the very richest to help reduce extreme inequality and raise revenue for sustained, long-term increases in public services like healthcare.