India’s richest 1 per cent hold more than four times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up for the bottom 70 per cent of the country’s population, while the total wealth of all Indian billionaires is more than the full-year Budget, a study by Oxfam said.

The world’s richest 2,153 people controlled more money than the poorest 4.6 billion combined in 2019, while unpaid or underpaid work by women and girls adds three times more to the global economy each year than the technology industry, Oxfam said.

The Nairobi-headquartered charity said in the Time to Care report released ahead of the World Economic Forum of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, that women around the world work 12.5 billion hours combined each day without pay or recognition.

Oxfam said its calculations are based on the latest data sources available, including from the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Databook 2019 and Forbes’ 2019 Billionaires List.

The issues of income and gender inequality are expected to figure prominently in discussions at the five-day summit of the WEF, starting on January 20. The WEF’s annual Global Risks Report has also warned that the downward pressure on the global economy from macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality continued to intensify in 2019.

Rising wealth gaps

Persistent inequality has negative implications for macroeconomic stability and inclusive economic growth.

Wealth concentrations can lead to decision-making power being restricted to a few while also resulting in significant adverse social impacts such as rising crime.

Rising inequality also compromises the pace of poverty reduction and compounds inequalities between various social groups such as men and women in terms of access to health, education and opportunities.

“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these,” said Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is representing the Oxfam confederation this year.

Concerns about inequality underlies recent social unrest in almost every continent, although it may be sparked by different tipping points such as corruption, constitutional breaches or the rise in prices for basic goods and services, as per the report.

The Oxfam report further said “sexist” economies are fuelling the inequality crisis by enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls.

Behar said the gap between rich and poor cannot be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these. He said women and girls are among those who benefit the least from today’s economic system.

Oxfam said governments are massively under-taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations and failing to collect revenues that could help lift the responsibility of care from women and tackle poverty and inequality.

Indian scenario

Over the past year, the total wealth of India has increased by $625.5 billion. The wealth of the top 1 per cent increased by 46 per cent while the bottom 50 per cent saw wealth increase at just 3 per cent. The wealth of billionaires rose from $325.5 billion in 2017 to $408 billion in 2019.

The total wealth of Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget for the fiscal year 2018-19, which was at Rs 24,42,200 crore.

Analysis of billionaire wealth shows that there are 15 billionaires from the consumer goods industry and more than 10 billionaires from the pharmaceuticals industry in 2019 - a rarity among developing countries.

The top 1 per cent of Indians hold more than four times the amount of wealth held by 953 million people (or the bottom 70 per cent of the population).

It would take a female domestic worker 22,277 years to earn what a top CEO of a tech company makes in one year. With earnings pegged at Rs 106 per second, the CEO would make more in 10 minutes than what the domestic worker would make in one year.

Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day - a contribution to the Indian economy of at least Rs 19 lakh crore a year, which is 20 times the entire education budget of India in 2019 (Rs 93,000 crore).

Direct public investments in the care economy of 2 per cent of GDP would potentially create 11 million new jobs. This would make up for the 11 million jobs lost in 2018.

Global scenario

The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet’s population.

The report flagged that global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the past decade, despite their combined wealth having declined in the past year.

Although global inequality has declined over the past three decades, domestic income inequality has risen in many countries, particularly in advanced economies and reached historic highs in some, the Global Risks Report flagged last week.

As per the global survey, the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

Besides, women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day - a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.

Getting the richest 1 per cent to pay just 0.5 per cent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.

While the wealth of the world’s billionaires decreased by $400 billion over the past year to $8.7 trillion, the world’s richest man, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, saw his net worth rise to $131 billion, up $19 billion from the year before. Just 1 per cent of his fortune amounts to more than the entire proposed health budget of Nigeria, a country of 201 million people.

Interestingly, the number of billionaires since the global financial crisis has nearly doubled with a new billionaire created every two days.

An estimated 2.3 billion people will be in need of care by 2030 - an increase of 200 million since 2015.

Climate change could worsen the looming global care crisis - by 2025, up to 2.4 billion people will live in areas without enough water, and women and girls will have to walk even longer distances to fetch it.

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