Eight Men Own The Same Wealth As The Poorest Half Of The World

8 people have same wealth as world's poorest half

Income inequality is so now lopsided that eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. 

A top corporate CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 garment factory workers in Bangladesh. 

And the world's 10 biggest corporations together have revenue greater than the 180 poorest countries combined. 

These findings by Oxfam, from a report titled An economy for the 99%, was released Sunday as the globe's leaders and the business elite traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for this week's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The conference is partly aimed at eliminating extreme income inequality. 

The study found that the richest eight people on the planet have net wealth of $426 billion — equivalent to what's held by the bottom half of the world's population.

An Economy For The 99%

Yet the global inequality crisis continues unabated: 

• Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. 

• Eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. 

• Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people. 

• The incomes of the poorest 10% of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1% increased 182 times as much. 

• A FTSE-100 CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh.

• In the US, new research by economist Thomas Piketty shows that over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%. 

• In Vietnam, the country‟s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years.