A family living in a slum in Delhi, India Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The world's 62 richest people now own as much wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of the global population, according to a new study by Oxfam.

The data, released ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, shows the gap between richest and poorest continues to widen.


In 2015 it required the combined wealth of the world's 80 richest people to match the wealth of the poorest half of the population. In 2010 that figure was at 388.

While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, Oxfam argued that had inequality not increased during that period an extra 200 million people would have escaped extreme poverty. That number could have increased to 700 million had the world's poorest benefited more than the rich from economic growth, according to the charity's research.

Wealth within the poorest half of the world's population has fallen by one trillion dollars since 2010, despite that population increasing by 400 million people during that period. That 41 percent drop is in stark contrast to a 44 percent increase in wealth for the richest 62 people during the past five years. The rise, of more than half a trillion dollars, has seen their amassed riches pass $1.76 trillion.


Oxfam said its prediction that the richest one percent would own the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent had come true one year earlier than expected.

Since the year 2000 the poorest half of the world's population has received one percent of the total increase in global wealth. By contrast, the top one percent received half of the total global wealth increase.

In both rich and developing countries the share of national income going to workers continues to fall. This results in workers capturing less wealth and owners of capital further stretching the wealth divide.


In the United States, CEOs have seen pay increases of 997.2 percent since 1978, while the typical worker has had a pay rise of just 10.9 percent in that same period. More recently, CEO pay in the US increased 54.3 percent since 2009, a period in which ordinary wages remained stagnant.

Income inequality is also feeding gender inequality at the very highest levels, with women holding just 24 of the CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies.

Oxfam said the use of tax havens remained a major issue. In 2014, corporate investment in tax havens was almost four times higher than in 2001, with an estimated $7.6 trillion -- more than the combined GDP of the UK and Germany -- now held offshore. If taxed this would bring in around $190 billion for governments worldwide every year.


The charity said shutting down tax havens was now a priority. At the WEF in 2013 prime minister David Cameron vowed to crack down on tax avoidance in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. Despite this, Oxfam said only Montserrat had fallen in line with new guidelines on transparency. "Our world is not short of wealth. It simply makes no economic sense -- or indeed moral sense -- to have so much in the hands of so few," Oxfam argued in its report.

This call to arms will be repeated during the WEF meeting in Davos, where the world's financial and political elites gather to ponder global finance.

Oxfam is asking those present to fight for a living wage, promote women's economic equality and rights, better share the tax burden and use progressive public spending to tackle inequality. "It is no longer good enough for the richest to pretend that their wealth benefits the rest of us when the facts show that the recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the poorest," said Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB.