‘World’s richest 1% get 82% of the wealth’, says Oxfam

‘World’s richest 1% get 82% of the wealth’, says Oxfam
By Katie Hope
Jan 22 2018
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42745853?ocid=global_bbccom_email_22012018_business

Some 82% of money generated last year went to the richest 1% of the global population while the poorest half saw no increase at all, the charity said.

Oxfam said its figures – which critics have queried – showed a failing system.

It blamed tax evasion, firms’ influence on policy, erosion of workers’ rights, and cost cutting for the widening gap. 

Oxfam has produced similar reports for the past five years. In 2017 it calculated that the world’s eight richest individuals had as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.

This year, it said 42 people now had as much wealth as the poorest half, but it revised last year’s figure to 61. Oxfam said the revision was due to improved data and said the trend of “widening inequality” remained.

‘Unacceptable’

Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring said its constant readjustment of the figures reflected the fact that the report was based “on the best data available at the time”.

“However you look at it, this is an unacceptable level of inequality,” he said.

Oxfam’s report coincides with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, a Swiss ski resort. The annual conference attracts many of the world’s top political and business leaders.

Inequality typically features high on the agenda, but Mr Goldring said that too often “tough talk fades away at the first resistance”.

Analysis by Anthony Reuben, BBC Reality Check

It’s really hard working out how much wealth the super-rich and the very poor have.

The super-rich tend not to publicise their worth and many of the world’s poorest countries keep poor statistics.

To illustrate that, this time last year, Oxfam told us that eight individuals have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Now it has revised that figure to 61 people for last year, falling to 42 people this year – that’s a pretty big revision.

And there are other caveats around the data on which all this is based, such as that the people on the list with the lowest wealth are not necessarily poor at all – they may be highly qualified professionals with large amounts of student debt, for example, or people with high incomes but enormous mortgages.

But whether it’s eight people, 42 people or 61 people who have the same wealth as half of the world, there is still great wealth inequality around the world, which is the message Oxfam is taking to Davos.

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