An Economy for the 1%

The global inequality crisis is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined, and 62 billionaires own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people on the planet. Power and privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest.

This report also shows how women are disproportionately affected by inequality – of the current ‘62’, 53 are men and just nine are women, and women continue to be dramatically over represented in precarious and low wage work.

A global network of tax havens further enables the richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. This has denied governments valuable resources that could be used to tackle poverty and level the playing field between women and men.

Oxfam is calling for urgent action to tackle the extreme inequality crisis which threatens to undermine the progress towards ending poverty and the advancement of women’s rights – starting by urging governments to bring an end the era of tax havens.