Billionaire wealth surges by $2 trillion in 2024, three times faster than the year before, while the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990 | Oxfam International

204 new billionaires were minted in 2024 , nearly four every week .

Sixty percent of billionaire wealth is now derived from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections.

Billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day.

Richest 1 percent in the Global North extracted $30 million an hour from the Global South through the financial system in 2023 .

Oxfam urges governments to tax the richest to reduce inequality, end extreme wealth, and dismantle the new aristocracy.

Research shows wages in the Global South are 87 to 95 percent lower than wages in North for work of equal skill.

Workers in low- and middle-income countries receive only 21 percent of global income.

Half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax for direct descendants.

Oxfam calculates that 60 percent of billionaire wealth is either from crony or monopolistic sources or inherited.

According to the ILO , women in the informal economy are more often found in the most vulnerable situations, for instance as domestic workers, home-based workers or contributing family workers, than their male counterparts.