On January 18, 2016, Oxfam, a global movement of people working together to fight poverty, shocked the world by revealing how a large portion of global wealth is managed by just a few billionaires worldwide. Oxfam’s report shared that 62 billionaires cumulatively have more wealth than half of the world’s population combined. They referred to this phenomenon as “runaway inequality” and go on to describe how the economy seems to serve the top (financial) 1% of the population. The Oxfam report also called out leaders from around the world, accusing them of only addressing the crisis verbally while doing absolutely nothing concrete to fix the disparity.

Fun Facts

• The world has 2,153 billionaires, cumulatively having more wealth than 4.6 billion people currently living worldwide.
• 4.6 billion people make up about 60% of the planet's population.
• The report detailing this shocking data was released by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
• This report was released to stimulate action to minimize the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor.
• The report showed that the 1% own more assets and wealth than the 99% combined.
• Within the same report emerged facts like the wealth of the poorest 50% dropped by 41% in the last five years. This decrease is despite the growth in the global population by 400 million souls.
• In the same five-year period, the wealth of the richest 62 people in the world has increased by $5oo billion to reach a total of $1.76tn.