You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

World’s Richest Saw Their Wealth Double as Pandemic Pushed 160 Million People into Poverty

HeadlineJan 18, 2022

The wealth of the world’s richest 10 men doubled since the start of the pandemic, even as 160 million more people were pushed into poverty. That’s the conclusion of Oxfam in its report “Inequality Kills,” released as the World Economic Forum kicked off its annual meeting — virtually, due to the pandemic. The report found global inequality is “contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day” — or one person every four seconds — even as the combined wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and eight other men grew by $1.2 billion a day. On Monday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres echoed Oxfam’s warning on global inequality.

Secretary-General António Guterres: “The last two years have demonstrated a simple but brutal truth: If we leave anyone behind, in the end we leave everyone behind. If we fail to vaccinate every person, we give rise to new variants that spread across borders and bring daily life and economies to a grinding halt. And if we fail to provide debt relief and financing to developing countries, we create a lopsided recovery that can send an interconnected global economy into a tailspin.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top