The charity calls out President Donald Trump for making wealth inequality worse.
The world’s richest 1 percent raked in 82 percent of the wealth created last year, according to a new report by poverty-fighting nonprofit Oxfam. Just 42 people now hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.7 billion, the organization said.
In the U.S., the country’s three richest people have the same wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The report called out President Donald Trump for policies that contribute to wealth inequality.
The world saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history in the year prior to March 2017, with a new one added every two days, according to Oxfam’s figures. The world now has 2,043 billionaires, and nine of every 10 are men.
Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 — while the average worker’s wage has risen an average of 2 percent. While billionaire income was booming last year, the poorest half of the world saw no increase in wealth, according to the report, “Reward Work, Not Wealth.”
Oxfam issued the annual report on Monday, a day before the start of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, which Trump plans to attend.