Oxfam: Billionaires’ wealth grew by $5T amid pandemic while 160M forced into poverty – By Darryl Coote (UPI) / January 17, 2022
Jan. 17 (UPI) — The two years of the pandemic have exacerbated the gap between the haves and have nots with the world’s billionaires seeing their fortunes balloon while more than 160 million people have been pushed into poverty, according to a new report from Oxfam.
Published Monday by the Britain-based charity organization, “Inequality Kills” says the COVID-19 pandemic has been made deadlier and prolonged due to inequality.
According to Oxfam, the wealth of the world’s 2,755 billionaires has grown amid the pandemic at a rate never seen before. As governments injected some $16 trillion into economies to keep the world economy working, billionaires saw their wealth jump from $8.6 trillion before the pandemic to $13.8 trillion as of March 2021.
The pandemic has seen a billionaire created every 26 hours, the wealth of the world’s richest 10 men grow by about $1.3 billion every day and at least one person die every four seconds with inequality playing a contributing factor, the report said.
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