This data was announced by Oxfam (an international alliance of 20 organizations working together in over 90 countries to find long-term solutions to poverty and injustice) before the World Economic Forum (WEF) taking place from January 22 to 25 in Davos (Switch).
Accordingly, 2018 is a year in which the gap between rich and poor becomes more obvious. Only 1% of the taxes paid by the rich (estimated at about 420 billion USD/year) could be enough to provide an education system for children who cannot go to school and provide health care to prevent 3 million deaths each year.
Oxfam also said that the assets of more than 2,200 billionaires globally increased by 900 billion USD in 2018, equivalent to 2.5 billion USD per day. While the assets of the world's richest people increased by 12%, the those of the poor decreased by 11%.
The majority of these super-rich people are Americans, according to Oxfam statistics based on Forbes data. These are still familiar names including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Microsoft's Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffet and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg with total assets of $357 billion, according to Forbes.
The reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty is one of the greatest achievements in the past quarter of a century, said Matthew Spencer, campaign and policy director at Oxfam. However, increasing rich and poor inequality is endangering human progress.
Oxfam also warned that many governments are even making social inequality worse by disrupting public service spending.
Specifically, in 2018, about 10,000 people died due to lack of health care conditions, 262 million children could not go to school, mainly because their parents did not have enough money to pay for tuition, uniforms or textbooks.
Running economies show rising wealth but only focus on a select few people, while millions of others are living on a minimal standard of living.
A Democratic congresswoman from New York has proposed taxing the rich up to 70% to raise funds to combat climate change. Another group of US lawmakers is also pushing for a health bill for everyone to increase the number of Americans owning health insurance.
