In January this year, Oxfam warned against spiraling inequality, forecasting that one percent of the world's population would be richer than the remaining 99 percent by the year 2016. The threshold has now been crossed.
The Global Wealth Report 2015 highlights another unexpected fact: that the world's wealthiest one percent is not entirely made up of billionaires, but contains a significant number of people whose assets amount to $759,900 or over. Indeed, there are only 123,000 ultra high net worth individuals (defined as those whose assets exceed $50 million) worldwide. As a group, however, they lay claim to 45 percent of the world's wealth.
The report says: "We estimate that 3.4 billion individuals—or 71 percent of adults worldwide—have wealth below $10,000, while the group of millionaires, who comprise less than 1% of the global population, account for 45% of total wealth."
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