Raphael Thys
The world's richest 0.01 per cent saw their share of the $418 trillion global wealth hit 11 per cent this year, up about $420 billion from 10 per cent in 2020 due to the pandemic - all while 100 million people fell into extreme poverty.
Analysts from the 2022 World Inequality Report said the 520,000 individuals who make up the 0.01 per cent have benefited greatly from the shift online of much of the world's economy during lockdowns.
The super-rich also saw significant gains from rising asset prices as financial markets bet on the speed and shape of the global recovery.
Belonging to the top 0.01 percent category meant having household wealth of at least 16.7 million euros, or $19 million, adjusted for purchasing power parity across currencies, according to the report.
'The COVID crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest of the population,' Lucas Chancel, the lead author of the report said.
'While the wealth of [all] billionaires rose by more than 3.6 trillion euros ($4 trillion), 100 million more people joined the ranks of extreme poverty.'
The top 0.01 per cent now owns 11 per cent of the global wealth, up from 10 per cent last year. Global billionaires also saw an increase to 3.5 per cent amid the pandemic
The top 10 per cent hold 76 per cent of the world's wealth while half the human population only holds 2 per cent. The global middle class holds 22 per cent
Of the top percenters, the 1 per cent own nearly 38 per cent of the global wealth and the richest 1-in-100 million per cent own 1.1 per cent of the wealth
The inequality report also found that global wealth inequality continued to rise in 2021, with half the world's population only possessing 2 per cent of wealth while the richest 10 per cent own 76 per cent of all wealth, or $317 trillion.
It also predicted that while the middle 40 per-cent, the global middle class, would enjoy a steady increase of their share in global wealth in the coming decades, the top 0.1 percent would eventually overtake the growth and see larger increases before 2080.
The growth would greatly benefit the top 52 richest individuals, the 1-in-100 million per cent who stand alongside Tesla's Elon Musk and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
They currently own hold about 1.1 per cent of global wealth, but have seen their riches grow by more than 9 per cent since 1995, the largest of any group.
The top 0.1 per cent is expected to overtake the middle 40 per cent in rate of growth
The top 1 percent has seen the most growth in their share of global wealth in 26 years, with the top 52 richest individuals seeing a growth of more than 9 per cent
Jeff Bezos, right, and Elon Musk stand as the two richest people in the world, owning a personal wealth of $177 billion and $151 billion, respectively
World's top billionaires
- Jeff Bezos: $177 billion through Amazon
- Elon Musk: $151 billion through Tesla and SpaceX
- Bernard Arnault: $150 billion through 70 brands empire including Louis Vuitton and Sephora
- Bill Gates: $124 billion through Microsoft
- Mark Zuckerberg: $97 billion Facebook
- Warren Buffet: $96 billion through Berkshire Hathaway
- Larry Ellison: $93 billion through Oracle
- Larry Page: $91.5 billion through Alphabet
- Sergey Brin: $89 billion through Alphabet
- Mukesh Ambani: $84.5 billion through Reliance Industries
Source: Forbes
The report drew on a variety of specialist research and public domain data, with a foreword written by U.S.-based economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the trio who won a 2019 Nobel for work on poverty.
'Since wealth is a major source of future economic gains, and increasingly, of power and influence, this presages further increases in inequality,' they wrote of what they called an 'extreme concentration of economic power in the hands of a very small minority of the super-rich.'
The findings corroborate a range of existing studies, 'rich lists' and other evidence pointing to a rise in health, social, gender and racial inequalities during the pandemic.
Forbes' annual world's billionaires list this year included a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires with a combined worth of $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion last year.
Social scientists estimated that billionaires this year collectively own 3.5 per cent of global household wealth, up from slightly above 2 per cent at the start of the pandemic in early 2020. These billionaires have seen their wealth grow by nearly 7 per cent in the last 26 years.
The study also found that while poverty increased sharply in countries with weaker welfare coverage, massive government support in the United States and Europe was able to mitigate at least some of that impact on lower earners there.
'This shows the importance of social states in the fight against poverty,' Chancel said.
Separately, it welcomed this year's deal on a global minimum corporation tax rate of 15 per cent as a possible milestone in efforts to halt a 'race to the bottom' which since the mid-1980s has led to a halving of average company tax rates to around 24 per cent.
However it said the agreement was flawed because the 15 per cent floor was lower than what average-earners pay in high-income countries and because it offered carve-outs and opaque arbitration possibilities to many of the companies affected.