Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016 - Oxfam Study
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/business/richest-1-percent-likely-to-control-half-of-global-wealth-by-2016-study-finds.html?_r=0
The richest 1 percent are likely to control more than half of the globes total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released on Monday. The warning about deepening global inequality comes just as the worlds business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The 80 wealthiest people in the world altogether own $1.9 trillion, the report found, nearly the same amount shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the worlds income scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 percent of the population, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the worlds total wealth, a share that is also increasing.
The type of inequality that currently characterizes the worlds economies is unlike anything seen in recent years, the report explained. Between 2002 and 2010 the total wealth of the poorest half of the world in current U.S. dollars had been increasing more or less at the same rate as that of billionaires, it said. However since 2010, it has been decreasing over that time.
Winnie Byanyima, the charitys executive director, noted in a statement that more than a billion people lived on less than $1.25 a day.
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