OXFAM, on Monday in Abuja disclosed that in a decade the world’s billionaires have doubled in and richer than 60 per cent of the world’s population.
This was made known by Oxfam’s India head, Amitabh Behar, while presenting Oxfam’s annual report on global inequality, which was released ahead of the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos.
The report also indicates that 2,153 billionaires currently are wealthy than the world’s 4.6 billion people.
The source of Oxfam’s figures are based on data from Forbes magazine and Swiss bank Credit Suisse but they are disputed by some economists.
The report reads in part, “Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist.
“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies. The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.
“If the world’s richest one per cent paid just 0.5 per cent extra tax on their wealth for 10 years, it would equal the investment needed to create 117 million new jobs in elderly and child care, education and health.”
The report also lamented that broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires, which women and girls across the world were at the bottom of the scale, putting in “12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day,” which worth at least $10.8 trillion per year.
“Women and girls are burdened in particular because they are most often caregivers that keep the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving, often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy,” the report said.
