2024 was a good year for the richest on our planet. The wealth of billionaires, according to the latest report from Oxfam Intermón ‘The looting continues’, increased by two trillion dollars last year, which is equivalent to 1,940 million euros. That is, a growth of 5,700 million dollars per day (about 5,528.72 million euros); a rate that triples that of the previous year.
In this last year alone, an average of almost four new billionaires have emerged every week. Or what is the same, a total of 204 new billionaires in one year.
In contrast, according to data published by the World Bank and collected by Oxfam, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. The report was published this Monday, coinciding with the first day of the World Economic Forum held in Davos (Switzerland), in which Numerous political and business leaders meet.
The second largest increase in joint wealth since there are records
In 12 months, the The number of billionaires has increased from 2,565 to 2,769 people in the world. Their joint wealth, for its part, has increased from 13 trillion dollars to 15 (or what is the same, from 12,610 million to 14,550 million euros. That is, according to the organization, the second largest increase in joint wealth in a year since there is registration. To understand the calculation, we must remember that one billion in English-speaking countries is equivalent to 1,000 million.
“In fact, the combined wealth of the ten richest men in the world has increased, on average, by almost $100 million a day. They are so rich that, even if they lost 99% of their wealth overnight, they would still be billionaires,” the organization says.
To put the rise in perspective, a year ago, if nothing changed, Oxfam estimated that the planet’s first billionaire would emerge within a decade. He increase in wealth concentrated on this percentage of the population has led to the estimate being multiplied by five. That is, in Ten years there could be at least five billionaires.
“A small privileged elite has captured the world economy at levels hitherto unthinkable or even unimaginable. The accumulated wealth of billionaires is growing so much that it is even beginning to be seen as a close reality for the first billionaires on the planet to appear, individuals with more than a trillion dollars of accumulated wealth. Not only are there more and more billionaires and their wealth is increasing – their combined wealth grew three times faster in the last year – but they have more and more power.“says Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar.
The director of the organization also takes advantage of the publication of the report to charge against the political situation in the United States: “The most concrete case of this kind of oligarchy of the super-rich is the case of the United States, the first economy on the planet, with a billionaire president and the richest man in the world ―Elon Musk― who pulls the strings. “The Oxfam report is intended to be a clear and direct wake-up call about how the disproportionate wealth of a few changes the rules of the game for the rest of the world’s population and the planet,” says Behar.
36% of wealth is inherited
Lastly, the report highlights that 60% of billionaires’ wealth is inherited or marked by clientelism or linked to monopoly power. In particular, Oxfam estimates that approximately 36% of all billionaires’ current wealth is inherited.
For its part, Forbes magazine also estimates that all billionaires under the age of 30 have inherited their wealth, while UBS estimates that, in the next 20 to 30 years, more than 1,000 of the billionaires who exist today could leave his heirs and heirs more than 5.2 billion US dollars.