Billionaire wealth globally jumped to highest peak ever in 2025, sparking dangerous levels of inequality says Oxfam

Billionaires are 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 $25.4 trillion — its highest level in history, according to a new Oxfam report released today at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  

The global 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.  

This year, in addition to the global report, Oxfam Canada has launched “The Rise of the Super-Rich: The State of Inequality in Canada” on wealth inequality in Canada. It provides a deep dive into the status of wealth inequality in Canada, why it’s increasing, the billionaires behind it, and what we can do to stop it.  

In Canada, there are at least 89 billionaires and the wealth of our 40 richest grew more than 20 per cent in the last year and now totals almost $550 billion – more than the GDPs of countries like Chile, Finland, Columbia, and South Africa. Canada’s richest top 1% hold nearly $1.25 trillion in wealth – almost as much as the bottom 80 percent combined.                                                

This comes as 25 percent of Canadians were living in food-insecure households and poverty has been rising steadily since 2020.  

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 a rise in oligarchy is undermining societies worldwide. Oxfam’s report finds: 

• The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $3.5 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 $3.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. 

“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is 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 as their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said. 

Billions of people are being left 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. 

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 that 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. For example, Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post, Elon Musk owns Twitter/X,  a billionaire consortium bought large shares of The Economist. In Canada, the wealthiest family, the Thomson family, own the Globe and Mail and a 70 percent stake in Thomson Reuters, one of the 10 biggest media and press companies in the world.   

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 and critics silenced. 

“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 Canada is calling on the Canadian government to prioritize: 

• Establish a wealth tax: A wealth tax that targets the ultra-rich should start at one percent on net-worth over $10M and rise to two percent on net-worth over $50M, and three percent on net-worth over $100M. A tax with this design has the potential to raise an additional $121 billion in tax revenues over the next five years. 
• Curb the use of offshore tax havens: Canadians and Canadian corporations are using tax havens to hold at least $682B outside of Canada, and largely these tax havens are used specifically to avoid paying taxes in Canada. This is money that if it were held in Canada could generate approximately $15B annually in federal revenues. 
• Support the establishment of the International Panel on Inequality: The vision for this panel is that the IPI would be a technical body, focused on data and policy analysis, and function similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Canada should champion the establishment of the IPI, dedicating the necessary political will, capital and legitimacy to the idea, and once established, should dedicate resources and encourage the participation of leading Canadian researchers. 

Ends 

Notes to Editor 

• Download Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power full report, Canada’s wealth inequality report, executive summary, and methodology note 
• Billionaire data is based on Oxfam’s analysis of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List for the year to 30 November 2025. Full calculations for billionaire statistics are in the methodology note  
• Hunger figures are from The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 report. In 2024, 28% of the world population faced severe or moderate food insecurity.   
• Poverty figures are from the World Bank June 2025 Update to Global Poverty Lines. In 2022, 48% of the world population lived below US$8.30 at purchasing power parity per day. 
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Global Protest Tracker details anti-government protests. 
• A Freedom House report found that 2024 was the nineteenth successive year of decline in global freedoms 

CONTACT INFORMATION 

Laveza Khan: laveza.khan@oxfam.org / +1 (613) 240 4157