The total wealth of the world’s dollar billionaires increased by 16% in 2025, three times faster than the average annual rate over the past five years, according to a report by the charity Oxfam.
Since 2020, their wealth has grown by 81% to a record $18.3 trillion.
The increase in billionaires‘ wealth over the past year amounted to $2.5 trillion in monetary terms. The poorest part of humanity, which includes 4.1 billion people, has assets of approximately the same amount, according to the report, which is traditionally published to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos.
This amount would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty in the world 26 times over. According to UN methodology, extreme poverty is defined as an income of less than $3 per person per day at 2021 purchasing power parity. According to the World Bank, approximately 10% of the world’s population falls into this category.
Last year, the number of dollar billionaires exceeded 3,000 for the first time, and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, became the first to reach $500 billion in wealth.
Oxfam notes that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. In addition, they own more than half of the world’s largest media companies.
“Poverty in the economic sense breeds hunger, and poverty in the political sense breeds anger,” said Oxfam Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Oxfam has called on governments around the world to develop realistic and detailed plans to combat inequality, as well as to increase taxation on the super-rich to limit their power. The organization also calls for a stricter separation of power and wealth, in particular through measures to counter lobbying and strengthen the independence of the media.
