Davos 2016: Economists say Oxfam claim that 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population is “meaningless and misleading”
Economists have slammed Oxfam for claiming 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population, saying the statistics are “meaningless and misleading”.
Oxfam, a global aid and development charity, issued a new report today, ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, claiming that the wealth of the poorest half ot he world’s population has fallen by $1 trillion (£700.5bn) since 2010, while the wealth of the richest 62 individuals has increased by more than $500bn to $1.76 trillion.
Read more: So what if 62 people are rich? Inequality is falling
Oxfam’s chief executive in Great Britain, Mark Goldring, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich – so few, you could fit them all on a single coach.”
But Mark Littlewood, director general at the Institute of Economic Affairs, called the figures “bogus” and questioned how the charity crunched the numbers: “The methodology of adding up assets and subtracting debts and then making a global ‘net wealth’ distribution implies that many of the poorest in the world are those in advanced countries with high debts.”