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The wealth of the world’s billionaires grew by $2tn (£1.64tn) last year, three times faster than in 2023, amounting to $5.7bn (£4.7bn) a day, according to a report by Oxfam.
The latest inequality report from the charity reveals that the world is now on track to have five trillionaires within a decade, a change from last year’s forecast of one trillionaire within 10 years.
The report, entitled Takers Not Makers, comes as many of the world’s political leaders, corporate executives and the super-rich travel to the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum meeting from Monday.
Oxfam’s examination of billionaire assets also coincides with Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. Trump is expected to include several billionaires in his team of close advisers, including the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, Elon Musk, and to offer large-scale tax breaks to the wealthiest US citizens.
At the same time, the number of people living under the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 a day has barely changed since 1990, and is close to 3.6 billion – equivalent to 44% of the world’s population today, the charity said. One in 10 women lives in extreme poverty (below $2.15 a day), which means 24.3 million more women than men endure extreme poverty.
Oxfam warned that progress on reducing poverty has ground to a halt and that extreme poverty could be ended three times faster if inequality were to be reduced.
The UK has the highest proportion of billionaire wealth among G7 countries, where wealth climbed by £35m a day to £182bn in 2024. Four new billionaires emerged last year, taking the UK total to 57. They are Mark Dixon, who runs the flexible office provider IWG; Sunder Genomal, the founder of Page Industries, a Bengaluru-based garment business; Donald Mackenzie, a Scottish tycoon who co-founded private equity firm CVC; and Jim Thompson, the founder of moving company Crown Worldwide.
Rising share values on global stock exchanges account for most of the increase in billionaire wealth, though higher property values also played a role. Residential property accounts for about 80% of worldwide investments.
Globally, the number of billionaires rose by 204 last year to 2,769. Their combined wealth jumped from $13tn to $15tn in just 12 months – the second-largest annual increase since records began. The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men grew on average by almost $100m a day and even if they lost 99% of their wealth overnight, they would remain billionaires.
They include the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with a net worth of $219.4bn, whose Amazon “empire” accounts for 70% or more of online purchases in Germany, France, the UK and Spain. Aliko Dangote, with a net worth of $11bn, is Africa’s richest person, holding a “near-monopoly” on cement in Nigeria and dominating the market across Africa, the report said.
The report argues that most of the wealth is taken, not earned, as 60% comes from either inheritance, “cronyism and corruption” or monopoly power. It calculates that 18% of the wealth arises from monopoly power.
According to the Forbes’ real time billionaires list, the richest people in the world are Musk; Bezos; Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook and Meta co-founder; Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle; and the LVMH founder Bernard Arnault. At Trump’s inauguration on Monday, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg are expected to sit close together, in a sign of the tech companies’ rapidly growing influence on politics.
Oxfam calls for bold solutions to “radically reduce inequality and hardwire fairness into our economies”.
Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s inequality policy lead, said: “Last year we predicted the first trillionaire could emerge within a decade, but this shocking acceleration of wealth means that the world is now on course for at least five. The global economic system is broken, wholly unfit for purpose as it enables and perpetuates this explosion of riches, while nearly half of humanity continues to live in poverty.”
She called on the UK government to prioritise economic policies that bring down inequality, including higher taxation of the super-rich.
“Huge sums of money could be raised, to tackle inequality here in the UK and overseas and provide crucial investment for our public services. For the first time, with the groundbreaking G20 agreement to cooperate on taxing the world’s super-rich [last July], there is genuine momentum to implement fairer taxation globally.”
