An Oxfam report published Monday shows that the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires surged three times faster in 2024 than the previous year, rising by $2 trillion as efforts to combat global poverty remained stagnant.
The findings come hours before the U.S. is set to inaugurate President-elect Donald Trump, a billionaire whose campaign for a second White House term was backed by the world’s richest man and whose proposed Cabinet is stacked with billionaires. The report was also released as business and political elites gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum summit.
According to Oxfam, an average of nearly four new billionaires emerged every week in 2024, and billionaires saw their wealth grow by roughly $5.7 billion per day.
“The capture of our global economy by a privileged few has reached heights once considered unimaginable,” said Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International’s executive director. “The failure to stop billionaires is now spawning soon-to-be trillionaires. Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated — by three times — but so too has their power.”
“The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, running the world’s largest economy,” Behar added. “We present this report as a stark wake-up call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the enormous wealth of a tiny few.”
Oxfam’s new report — titled Takers, Not Makers — estimates that 36% of billionaire wealth is inherited and 18% stems from monopoly power accrued by corporate behemoths such as Amazon. Every billionaire under the age of 30 inherited their wealth, according to Oxfam.
Another 6% of global billionaire wealth can be attributed to “crony sources” such as “lobbying, funding political campaigns, and creating revolving doors between the private sector and civil service,” the new report finds.
All told, “most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned — 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption, or monopoly power,” the report estimates.
“The ultra-rich like to tell us that getting rich takes skill, grit, and hard work. But the truth is most wealth is taken, not made,” said Behar. “So many of the so-called ‘self-made’ are actually heirs to vast fortunes, handed down through generations of unearned privilege. Untaxed billions of dollars in inheritance is an affront to fairness, perpetuating a new aristocracy where wealth and power stays locked in the hands of a few.”
If current trends persist, Oxfam estimates that the world is on track to see at least five trillionaires within a decade.
“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,” said Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s inequality policy lead. “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.”
In the face of such staggering wealth accumulation at the very top, Oxfam called on governments to abolish tax havens, tax the inheritances of the ultra-rich, more strictly regulate corporations to “ensure they pay living wages and cap CEO pay,” and provide debt relief to economically struggling nations to “end the flow of wealth from South to North.”
“Taken together, today’s levels of extreme wealth concentration are based not on merit,” said Oxfam. “These are takers, and not makers.”
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.