While most people around the world had to face financial difficulties and hardship as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the wealthiest of the wealthy have seen an increase in fortune (quite literally).
Namely, the latest data from the 2022 World Inequality Report show that billionaires on the global level owned “merely” 1% of the global wealth back in 1995. However, as of 2020, this figure has increased to 3%.
Ironically, the report also shows that the amount spiked mostly during the very first year of the pandemic. As a matter of fact, 2020 saw the most pronounced increase thus far.
Overall, the data suggests that since the mid-nineties the top 1% took around 38% of the total accumulated wealth, whereas the bottom 50% managed to accumulate merely 2%.
Additionally, the report focused on wealth inequalities sorted by different factors; economic groups were also examined according to gender.
On that end, data shows that women workers had experienced an increase when it comes to global earnings. Still, experts agree on one thing — the progress has been rather slow over the past 30 years.
Today, women make up around 35% of total global earnings, which is only a 5% increase since 1990. Conversely, the only country in the report where women’s share of the total global income dropped since the ‘90s was China; despite it being the first state to recover from the financial hardships caused by the pandemic.
