The gap between the richest and the poorest is widening.
A new report from Oxfam International, "An Economy for the 1%," says that the richest 1% of the world's population now own more than everyone else combined, while 62 of the world's richest people own about the same as the bottom half of the world's population.
Compared to 2010, when 388 of the world's richest people owned as much as half the world, the wealth of the 62 richest people has risen by more than half a trillion dollars, to $1.76 trillion, the report says. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half of the population — 3.6 billion people — fell by a little over a trillion dollars.
This is despite 2015 being a pretty bad year for the world's richest, with the world's 400 wealthiest people losing around $19 billion last year.
Oxfam's report shows a pretty big gender gap among the extremely wealthy, too: Out of those 62 richest people in the world, only 9 are women.
Oxfam, a confederation of organizations whose main task is to fight poverty, points out the the average annual income of the poorest 10% of people has risen by less than $3 each year in nearly 25 years.
— Oxfam (@oxfamgb) January 18, 2016
This might seem in contrast to Pew's September report which indicated that there was a significant reduction in extreme poverty since 1995. Oxfam's report acknowledges this, but says that, had inequality between the rich and poor not grown during that period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty.
Some of the suggestions from Oxfam for alleviating the situation include increasing minimum wage rates and recovering "missing billions" from tax havens, and using that money to invest in healthcare, schools and other vital public services.