Billionaires had a good year in 2024 as a recent report showed that their wealth grew by USD 2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly USD 5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. The report was published by Oxfam on Monday.
The development organisation said an average of nearly four new billionaires were minted every week.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.
In 2024, the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023.
Their combined wealth surged from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months.
This is the second largest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began.
The wealth of the world’s ten richest men grew on average by almost $100 million a day —veven if they lost 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would still remain billionaires.
Last year, Oxfam predicted the emergence of the first trillionaire within a decade.
However, with billionaire wealth accelerating at a faster pace this projection has expanded dramatically — at current rates the world is now on track to see at least five trillionaires within that time frame.
This ever-growing concentration of wealth is enabled by a monopolistic concentration of power, with billionaires increasingly exerting influence over industries and public opinion.
Oxfam published “Takers Not Makers” today as business elites gather in the Swiss resort town of Davos and billionaire Donald Trump, backed by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, is inaugurated as President of the United States.
“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable. The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated —by three times— but so too has their power,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
“The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, running the world’s largest economy. We present this report as a stark wake up-call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the enormous wealth of a tiny few,” said Behar.
The report also highlighted how, contrary to popular perception, billionaire wealth is largely unearned — 60 percent of billionaire wealth now comes from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections.
Unmerited wealth and colonialism — understood as not only a history of brutal wealth extraction but also a powerful force behind today’s extreme levels of inequality — stand as two major drivers of billionaire wealth accumulation.
Oxfam calculated that 36 percent of billionaire wealth is now inherited. Research by Forbes found that every billionaire under 30 has inherited their wealth, while, according to UBS estimates, over 1,000 of today’s billionaires will pass on more than USD 5.2 trillion to their heirs over the next two to three decades.
Many of the super-rich, particularly in Europe, owe part of their wealth to historical colonialism and the exploitation of poorer countries.
For example, the fortune of billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who has put his sprawling media ‘empire’ at the service of France’s nationalist right, was built partly from colonial activities in Africa.
This dynamic of wealth extraction persists today: vast sums of money still flow from the Global South to countries in the Global North and their richest citizens, in what Oxfam’s report described as modern-day colonialism.
The richest 1 percent in Global North countries like the US, UK and France extracted USD 30 million an hour from the Global South through the financial system in 2023.
Global North countries control 69 percent of global wealth, 77 percent of billionaire wealth and are home to 68 percent of billionaires, despite making up just 21 percent of the global population.
The average Belgian has about 180 times more voting power in the largest arm of the World Bank than the average Ethiopian.
Low- and middle-income countries spend on average nearly half of their national budgets on debt repayments, often to rich creditors in New York and London.
This far outstrips their combined investment in education and healthcare. Between 1970 and 2023, Global South governments paid USD 3.3 trillion in interest to Northern creditors.
The history of empire, racism and exploitation has left a lasting legacy of inequality.
Today, the average life expectancy of Africans is still more than 15 years shorter than that of Europeans. Research shows that wages in the Global South are 87 to 95 percent lower than wages in the Global North for work of equal skill.
Despite contributing 90 percent of the labour that drives the global economy, workers in low- and middle-income countries receive only 21 percent of global income.
Globally, women are more often found in the most vulnerable forms of informal employment, including domestic work, than their male counterparts. Migrant workers in rich countries earn, on average, about 13 percent less than nationals, with the wage gap rising to 21 percent for women migrants.
“The ultra-rich like to tell us that getting rich takes skill, grit and hard work. But the truth is most wealth is taken, not made. So many of the so-called ‘self-made’ are actually heirs to vast fortunes, handed down through generations of unearned privilege. Untaxed billions of dollars in inheritance is an affront to fairness, perpetuating a new aristocracy where wealth and power stays locked in the hands of a few,” said Behar.
“Meanwhile, the money desperately needed in every country to invest in teachers, buy medicines and create good jobs is being siphoned off to the bank accounts of the super-rich. This is not just bad for the economy —it’s bad for humanity.”
