The 62 richest people have as much wealth as half the world, says Oxfam

The combined riches of 62 of the world’s most well-heeled individuals in 2015 equaled the wealth of 3.5 billion people — the bottom half of humanity — a new report about extreme global wealth inequality released Sunday showed.

The findings, published by the poverty-fighting organization Oxfam, highlight the growing divide between those at either end of the income spectrum. Since 2010, the wealth of the richest 62 people increased 44% to $1.76 trillion, the report found. Over the same period, the wealth of the world’s poorest half fell over a trillion dollars or 41%.

“Our economic system is heavily skewed in their (the wealthiest) favor, and arguably increasingly so,” Oxfam said. “Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.”

Oxfam added: “Rising inequality is a problem for all of us. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) notes that increasing income inequality poses a risk for social cohesion and threatens to slow down the current economic recovery.”

As recently as 2010, Oxfam calculated, it took 388 of the world’s wealthiest individuals to match the collective income levels of the world’s poorest half. Oxfam did not name the 62 individuals it used as the basis for its calculations. In previous research reports, it has used Forbes‘ billionaires list, in 2015 topped by Bill Gates whose net worth is $79.2 billion.

The group unveiled its research just a few days before the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an annual event that sees world leaders, corporate titans and members of civil society gather for a week of discussions and workshops on the world’s most pressing problems. Income inequality is rarely far from the top of the agenda.

“In addition to being a key economic concern, inequality represents the greatest societal concern associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab said in previewing the theme of this year’s meeting. The theme will be about how technology will dramatically alter the way we live, work and relate to one another.

”

The largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital — the innovators, shareholders and investors — which explains the rising gap in wealth between those dependent on capital versus labor,” Schwab said.

Oxfam found that the income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year for almost a quarter of a century. It said that huge concentrations of wealth and incomes were exacerbating the situation because of the increasing return to capital versus labor.

“In almost all rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has been falling. This means workers are capturing less and less of the gains from growth,” Oxfam said. “In contrast, the owners of capital have seen their capital consistently grow (through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing.”

More than a billion people live in extreme poverty, according to The World Bank, which defines this level as living off $1.90 per day.

Oxfam, headquartered in Oxford, England, said that tax avoidance, including at over 200 of the world’s largest companies, some of them strategic partners of the WEF, was further aggravating the problem because it was effectively starving poorer countries of the resources they need to tackle poverty. Tax havens were allowing companies to shelter $7.6 trillion offshore — more than the combined gross domestic products of Germany and the United Kingdom, Oxfam said.

19.01.2016