Number of Billionaires Globally Rise to 1,645 in 2014

The report also noted that taxing billionaires, whose number has doubled in recent years, would raise enough to ensure an education for every child in the world and slow the rise in inequality.

Reuters revealed that the report by Oxfam also showed that while the world's richest people had recovered quickly from the global financial crisis, the benefits of economic growth were not being shared with the majority, including hundreds of millions trapped in poverty.

The world's richest 85 people, who are worth as much as the poorest half of the global population, saw their collective wealth increase by $668 million a day - almost half a million dollars a minute - over the last year, the Oxfam report found.

Oxfam chief executive, Mark Goldring said a wealthy minority around the world were taking "an ever-increasing share of the pie", and called on world leaders to close the gap between rich and poor.

"This is not just an issue of fairness, but in a world where people are dying of hunger or because they can't afford healthcare, it becomes an issue of life and death," Goldring said in a statement.

The report calculated that taxing billionaires 1.5 per cent of their wealth over $1 billion could raise $74 billion a year, enough to get every child in the world into school and to deliver health services in the world's poorest countries.
Since 2009, at least one million women have died in childbirth because of a lack of basic health services, and around the world 57 million children are missing out on school, the report said.

Seventy per cent of the world's population live in countries where economic inequality is greater than it was 30 years ago, such as South Africa, where inequality is greater than it was at the end of the apartheid era, the Oxfam report found.

Given the current levels of income inequality in African countries, it is estimated that the continent's poverty rate will not fall below 3 percent of the population - the World Bank's definition of ending poverty - until 2075.
The report found that inequality within countries was rising rapidly all over the world, with many nations' richest people earning more, both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the population.

In India, China and Nigeria, the richest people's share of national income is large and growing, while the share of more than 1.1 billion people - 16 percent of the world's population - is shrinking.
Three million people in Kenya could be saved from extreme poverty in the next five years if the country reduced inequality levels by 12 percent, the report said.

Goldring said inequality was holding back efforts to end poverty and called it one of the "defining problems of our age."
"Governments around the world have been guilty of a naive faith that wealth going to those at the top will automatically benefit everyone.
"That's not true - it is their responsibility to ensure the poorest are not left behind."
Oxfam called on governments to share the tax burden fairly and tackle tax dodging, promote women's economic equality and rights and achieve universal free public services by 2020.

Culled from: http://www.thisdaylive.com