Billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people
Billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025, three times faster than the past five-year average, to $18.3 trillion – its highest level in history, according to a new Oxfam report today as the World Economic Forum opens in Davos.
Billionaire wealth has increased by 81 per cent since 2020. This comes as one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty.
The report "Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power” analyses how the super-rich are securing political power to shape the rules of our economies and societies for their own gain and to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of people around the world.
The surge in billionaire wealth coincides with the US Trump administration pursuing a pro-billionaire agenda. It has slashed taxes for the super-rich, undermined global efforts to tax large corporations, reversed attempts to address monopoly power, and contributed to the growth of AI-related stocks that have provided a boon to super-rich investors world-wide.
His presidency has sent a clear warning sign to the rest of the world about the power of the ultra-rich. Rather than solely a US phenomenon, Oxfam’s paper demonstrates that rising oligarchy is undermining societies worldwide. Oxfam’s report finds:
- The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $2.5 trillion, almost equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity – 4.1 billion people.
- The number of billionaires topped 3,000 last year for the first time, while the richest, Elon Musk, became the first ever to surpass half a trillion dollars.
- Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people.
- The $2.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.
Inequality in Africa is increasing at an alarming rate. In 2025 alone, the combined wealth of Africa’s 24 billionaires grew by more than 32% billion – a 36.5% increase, four times faster than the growth seen over the previous five years. Today, Africa’s four richest billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of the continent’s population – 750 million people while nearly 59% of Africans or 892.7 million people are food insecure – a 29.5% increase between 2019 and 2024.
Kenya mirrors this crisis as the country's growth is leaving millions behind. Despite an average economic growth of 5% a year over the past decade, wealth is dangerously concentrated at the top. Today, the richest 125 individuals in Kenya own more wealth than 42.6 million people (77% of the population) while the top 1% control 78% of Kenya’s total financial wealth. If converted into 100-shilling notes, the wealth of the richest 125 would almost cover the entirety of Nairobi County.
While a handful of elites continue to multiply their wealth, the number of people living in extreme poverty in Kenya has increased by 7 million (37%) since 2015 and the share of Kenyans facing food insecurity rose by 71% between 2014 and 2024. This inequality is colliding with a deepening climate crisis with prolonged drought and repeated rain failures eroding livelihoods and driving acute food insecurity. Projections show an estimated 3.0 to 3.5 million people are expected to require humanitarian food assistance through May 2026 while policy choices that entrench inequality and underinvest in climate resilience and social protection are intensifying the impact on the poorest households.
Taxing the richest more would generate substantial amounts of money, while also reducing inequality. A low tax rate of 2% on wealth above $1 million but below $5 million, 3% on net wealth of between $5 million and $50 million and 5% for all wealth above $50 million could generate nearly 3% of GDP in tax revenue which would be enough to fill the universal healthcare funding gap.
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable,” said Oxfam Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens. A World Values Survey of 66 countries found that almost half of all people polled say that the rich often buy elections in their country.
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said.
Billions of people are facing avoidable hardships of poverty, hunger and death from preventable diseases because the system is rigged against them. Worldwide, one in four people face food insecurity, having to regularly skip meals.
The rate of poverty reduction has stagnated with levels broadly where they were in 2019. At the same time, extreme poverty is rising in Africa. Political decisions made by governments across the world last year to slash aid budgets have directly hit people living in poverty and could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
Civil liberties and political rights are being rolled back and suppressed; 2024 was the nineteenth successive year of decline, with a quarter of all countries curtailing freedoms of expression. Last year, there were more than 142 significant anti-government protests across 68 countries, which authorities typically met with violence.
“Being economically poor creates hunger. Being politically poor creates anger,” said Behar.
The chances of democratic backsliding through, for example, the erosion of the rule of law or the undermining of elections is seven times more likely in highly unequal countries. “No country can afford to be complacent. The pace at which economic and political inequality can hasten the erosion of people’s rights and safety can be frighteningly fast,” he said.
Governments are allowing the super-rich to dominate media and social media companies. Billionaires own more than half the world’s largest media companies and all the main social media companies.
The report cites Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post, Elon Musk with Twitter/X, Patrick Soon-Shiong with the Los Angeles Times, and a billionaire consortium buying large shares of The Economist. In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré now controls CNews, rebranding it as the French equivalent of Fox News. In the UK, three-quarters of newspaper circulation is controlled by four super-rich families.
The report cites evidence that only 27% of top editors globally are female and just 23% belong to racialized groups, respectively. This has seen their voices marginalized, while minorities like immigrants and people of colour are often stigmatized and scapegoated,d and critics silenced.
Authorities in Kenya have used X to track, punish, and even abduct and torture government critics. A study by the University of California, meanwhile, found that in the months following Elon Musk’s acquisition of X, the rates of hate speech increased by about 50 per cent.
“Our societies feel more toxic today because they demonstrably are, but not always for the reasons we’re being told. The outsized influence that the super-rich have over our politicians, economies and media has deepened inequality and led us far off track on tackling poverty. Governments should be listening to the needs of the people on things like quality healthcare, action on climate change and tax fairness,” Behar said.
Oxfam is calling on governments to prioritise:
- Realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress.
- Effectively taxing the super-rich to reduce their power, including with broad-base taxes on income and wealth at high enough rates to reduce massive levels of inequality.
- Stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich, ensuring more media independence, and banning hate speech.
Accountability for the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including stronger protection for people’s freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, and for civil society organisations and trade unions.
Ends
