One percent of the world's richest people has twice as much wealth than the rest of mankind combined, said Oxfam, a British NGO in an inequality report, published before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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Last year, 2,153 billionaires had more than 4.6 billion people combined, says Oxfam. It therefore calls on governments to try to change this. According to the organization, they are inadequately taxing the rich and corporations and spending little on utilities.

The report also notes gender inequalities. The twenty-two richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa combined. Women and girls face disproportionately higher burdens in the care of others and have fewer opportunities to earn, according to Oxfam.

"Our disrupted economies are filling the pockets of billionaires and big companies to the detriment of ordinary men and women," commented Amitabh Behar, Oxfam's CEO of India. "No wonder people are beginning to wonder if billionaires should ever exist," he added.

According to Bloomberg, the value of the three richest people in the world has risen to $ 231 billion over the past decade. The fifth richest man on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg, chief of the company, grew the most. Last year he raised another six billion dollars. Top ranking belongs to Amazon Internet director Jeff Bezos, who has $ 116 billion.

Total assets of the top 20 billionaires have doubled since 2012, from $ 672 billion to $ 1.397 trillion, Bloomberg said. An individual who would have put aside $ 10,000 a day since the time the pyramids were being built in Egypt would still have only one-fifth of the average wealth of the world's top five riches, Oxfam writes.

The annual statistics used by Oxfam are based on Credit Suisse's Global Wealth report. The nonprofit itself states that the data is not very reliable and that it can even reduce the wealth gap.