Just 162 Billionaires Have the Same Wealth as Half of Humanity
In a stark reminder of gaping global inequality, a report published Sunday reveals that 162 billionaires, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, have the same wealth as the poorest half of the world.
There are 2,153 billionaires globally, and, in 2019, they held more wealth combined than 4.6 billion people, according to the report, which uses data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report and Forbes’ billionaire rankings.
The report uses a striking analogy to put these amounts of wealth in context. If everyone sat on their wealth piled up in $100 bills, most people would be sitting on the floor, a middle-class person from a rich country would be the height of a chair, and the world’s two richest men would be sitting in space.
Oxfam’s report is published annually to coincide with the start of the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, where high-profile policymakers, business leaders and the wealthy take their private jets to a Swiss ski town to discuss how to “improve the state of the world.”
Once someone is very wealthy, the report points out, it’s easy to just watch the money accumulate because the rich can afford the best investment advice. Billionaire wealth has increased by an average of 7.4% a year since 2009, according to the report published by Oxfam, an international development nongovernmental organization. And 2019 was a good year for the ultrarich. Despite their wealth levels dipping at the start of the year, they quickly rebounded, and the world’s 500 richest people managed to add $1.2 trillion to their wealth over the course of the year, according to a Bloomberg analysis. (Read more from “Just 162 Billionaires Have the Same Wealth as Half of Humanity” HERE)
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