The richest 1% of the world's adults own more wealth than the bottom 95% of the global population put together.
That's not a headline. That's the math from the UBS Global Wealth Report, analysed by Oxfam in 2024.
Break it down:
- 60 million adults (roughly 1.6% of the world's adult population) own $226 trillion — or 48.1% of all global personal wealth
- At the bottom, 1.57 billion adults (41% of the world's adults) share just $2.7 trillion — that's 0.6% of global wealth
- In the middle, 3.1 billion adults (82% of the population) own just 12.7% of the total
The US is the most top-heavy of all major economies. The top 1% of Americans hold 40.5% of US wealth — more than any other OECD country.
It's not just wealth. It's power.
A billionaire either runs or is the principal shareholder of more than a third of the world's top 50 corporations. The combined market cap of those corporations is $13.3 trillion. Just two corporations control 40% of the global seed market. The "big three" US-based asset managers — BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard — hold $20 trillion in assets, roughly one-fifth of all investable assets on Earth.
The ultra-wealthy aren't just sitting on wealth. They're shaping what everyone else can do.
The carbon footprint angle is wild too. A person in the global top 0.1% is responsible for an estimated 298 tonnes of CO2 per year. Someone in the bottom half of the income distribution produces 0.8 tonnes. If everyone on Earth polluted like the top 1%, we'd cross the catastrophic 1.5°C warming threshold in under three months.
Since 2020, for every $1 of new wealth earned by someone in the bottom 90%, a person in the top 1% captured $1.7. The richest 1% grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth generated globally since the pandemic.
This isn't "the world is getting richer." It's "the top is getting richer, very fast, while most people aren't moving."