World's wealthiest men increased fortunes during COVID; poverty, inequality skyrocketed: Report

According to a survey released, the world's ten wealthiest men increased their fortunes over the first two years of the coronavirus epidemic while poverty and inequality skyrocketed.
In a briefing released ahead of a virtual mini-summit of world leaders being conducted under the aegis of the World Economic Forum, Oxfam stated that men's wealth increased from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion at an average pace $1.3 billion each day.

According to Oxfam, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce worldwide poverty, billionaires' wealth rose higher during the epidemic. It dubbed this imbalance "economic violence," claiming that it contributes to the deaths of 21,000 people per day due to a lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, starvation, and climate change. The research follows a December 2021 analysis by the organisation, which concluded that the world's richest people's proportion of global wealth increased at an unprecedented rate during the epidemic.

According to the organisation, the epidemic has pushed 160 million people into poverty, with non-white ethnic minorities and women suffering the brunt of the damage as inequality has risen. To help save lives, Oxfam advocated for tax reforms to support global vaccine production, healthcare, climate adaption, and gender-based violence reduction. The organisation stated that it based its wealth estimations on the most up-to-date and thorough data sources available, including the Forbes 2021 Billionaires List.

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According to Forbes, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Amazon's Jeff Bezos; Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg; former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison; US investor Warren Buffet, and Bernard Arnault, CEO of French luxury group LVMH, are among the world's wealthiest men.

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