Inequality gap widens as ‘world’s richest 1% get 82% of the wealth.
Approximately 82 percent of the money generated last year went to the richest 1 percent of the global population, the report said, while the poorest half saw no increase at all, a new study by global charity Oxfam claimed.
Last year, Oxfam said billionaires would have seen an uptick of $762 billion — enough to end extreme poverty seven times over.
The report is timely as the global political and business elite gather in snow-clad Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week.
Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said the statistics signal “something is very wrong with the global economy.”
“The concentration of extreme wealth at the top is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of hard-working people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food,” he added.
