Billionaire wealth soars three times faster by $2 trillion in 2024: Oxfam

Billionaire wealth surged by $2 trillion in 2024, growing at an unprecedented rate, raising concerns about global inequality.

Billionaire wealth across the globe surged by $2 trillion in 2024 to $15 trillion at a rate three times faster than the previous year, a study showed on Monday here as the richest of the world began to assemble for their annual jamboree in this ski resort town.

In its flagship inequity report released every year on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Oxfam International contrasted the huge jump in the billionaire wealth with the number of people living in poverty barely having changed since 1990.

Wealth of billionaires in Asia increased by $299 billion in 2024, Oxfam said while predicting that there will be at least five trillionaires within a decade from now.

The year 2024 saw 204 new billionaires getting minted -- an average of nearly four every week. Asia itself got 41 new billionaires in the year.

In its report titled 'Takers, not Makers', Oxfam said the richest 1% in the Global North extracted $30 million an hour from the Global South through the financial systems in 2023.

It further said that 60% of billionaire wealth is now derived from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections, showing that "extreme billionaire wealth is largely unmerited." The rights group urged governments across the world to tax the richest to reduce inequality, end extreme wealth, and dismantle the new aristocracy.

It also sought that the former colonial powers must address past harms with reparations.