the richest 1% have 45.6% of global net wealth – Corriere.it

The energy emergency and inflation, with a rise in the price of all goods and in particular of food products, further increase inequalities, already growing with the pandemic, who sawor an ever greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few in the face of a progressive impoverishment of large segments of the population. It is what emerges from Oxfam report, which updates the traditional analysis on the persistent gap between rich and poor, published as usual at the opening of the World Economic Forum, scheduled from 16 to 20 January in Davos, in the Swiss Alps. With a novelty.

The extra profits of the energy and food big names

This year the confederation of NGOs, which brings together 18 organizations from different countries dedicated to the fight against poverty, also lit a beacon out of 95 energy and agri-food giants that made extra profits in 2022. The analysis shows that the companies studied made $306 billion in excess profits. In 2022 their profits increased by 256% compared to the 2018-2021 average; 84% of the extra profits, equal to 257 billion, went to the shareholders; 76% of companies increased their profit margins.

Two examples? The case of the Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, which received $8.5 billion in dividends last year; or of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, major shareholder in many major energy companiesand, which in just seven months has seen its wealth increase by 42 billion dollars (+46%).

The distribution of wealth

In the pandemic two-year period 2020-2021, the richest 1% saw the value of their assets grow by 26 thousand billionof of dollariin real terms, hoarding 63% of the overall increase in global net wealth (42 trillion dollars), almost double the share (37%) went to the poorest 99% of the world’s population. The record of the entire decade 2012-2021 is therefore surpassed, when the top 1% had benefited from just over half (54%) of the increase in planetary wealth. For the first time in 25 years, extreme wealth and extreme poverty are also rising simultaneously.

Since 2020, a billionaire has, on average, increased his wealth by approximately $1.7 million for every dollar of wealth increase of a person in the bottom 90%. Despite the stock market meltdown in 2022, the fortunes of billionaires have nevertheless increased at a rate of 2.7 billion dollars a day over the last three years, after a decade that saw the number of Scrooges and their assets double. At the end of 2021, the richest 1% held 45.6% of the wealth globalwhile the poorest half of the world is just 0.75%.

Over the past 10 years, billionaires have doubled their wealth in real terms, recording an increase in the value of their fortunes almost six times higher than that recorded by the poorest 50% of the world’s population. But if we look at the richest 1% of the planet, then the accumulation of wealth in the last 10 years is 74 times greater than that of the poorest 50%.

Poverty and inflation

In 2020, over 70 million more people fell into extreme poverty (forced to live on less than $2.15 a day), with a increase in the incidence of extreme poverty by 11%. It is estimated that globally between 702 and 828 million people went hungry in 2021, almost 1 in 10 people. In every region of the world, the prevalence of food insecurity is higher among women than among men.

Rising inflation has led to declines in real wages for many workers. Oxfam’s analysis of payroll data in 96 countries indicates that in 2022, at least 1.7 billion workers lived in countries where inflation has outpaced wage growth.

To make matters worse, the tightening of fiscal policies. Oxfam has calculated that between 2023 and 2027 three-quarters of the world’s governments (148 countries) plan to reduce public spending including for health care and education, was a total of 7.8 trillion dollars.

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