Trump is expected to meet business leaders in Davos today

Every year Oxfam tries to establish a link between the rising wealth of the rich and increasing poverty ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos. But no such link exists, says Rainer Zitelmann

There are more and more billionaires in the world, and their wealth keeps growing. This emerges from a report that Oxfam, as it does every year, publishes at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

According to the report, the roughly 3,000 billionaires worldwide owned assets worth 18.3 trillion US dollars last year. Since 2020, according to Oxfam, their wealth has increased by more than 80 per cent in real terms. At the same time, Oxfam emphasizes that almost half of humanity lives in poverty.

Is that true? Oxfam attempts to establish a connection between the rising wealth of the rich and poverty. Such a connection does exist, but in a completely different way than Oxfam suggests. Oxfam claims that half of humanity lives in poverty and bases this on World Bank figures. The World Bank uses different definitions of poverty. According to one definition, which applies a broader concept of poverty, 45.5 per cent of the world’s population did indeed live in poverty in 2025.

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