Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023, according to an Oxfam report at Davos, a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organizations, focusing on alleviating global poverty.
In its latest annual inequality report, “Takers Not Makers”, Oxfam explores how most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned – with 60 percent coming from either inheritance, cronyism or monopoly power.
The report says that this system still extracts wealth from the Global South to the super-rich 1 percent in the Global North at a rate of US$30 million an hour.
Today most billionaires still live in the rich countries of the Global North, despite these countries being home to just one-fifth of the global population.
At least five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, Oxfam says.
In 2024, the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023. Their combined wealth surged from US$13 trillion to US$15 trillion.
In 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by US$2 trillion, with 204 new billionaires created. This is an average of almost four new billionaires per week.
The World Bank calculates that if current growth rates continue and inequality does not decrease, it will take more than a century to end poverty. It also shows that only 8 percent of humanity lives in countries that have low inequality.
In the EU, billionaire wealth grew by €138 billion (US$143.4 billion) in the last year – equivalent to an increase of €376 million a day. At the end of 2024, billionaire wealth in the EU stood at €2.2 trillion with a total of 440 billionaires, an increase of 49 from 2023.
Wealth by inheritance
In 2023, more billionaires were created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism for the first time, Oxfam says.
Oxfam’s calculates that 36 percent of billionaire wealth is now inherited. Research by Forbes found that every billionaire under 30 has inherited their wealth, while UBS estimates that over 1,000 of today’s billionaires will pass on more than US$5.2 trillion to their heirs over the next two to three decades.