Billionaires richer than 60 percent of the world’s population: Oxfam

The world’s billionaires have doubled in the past decade and are richer than 60 percent of the global population, the charity Oxfam said Monday.

It said poor women and girls were at the bottom of the scale, putting in “12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day,” estimated to be worth at least $10.8 trillion a year.

“Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist,” Oxfam’s India head Amitabh Behar said.

“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies,” Behar said ahead of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, where he will represent Oxfam.

Oxfam’s annual report on global inequality is traditionally released just before the forum opens on Tuesday in the Swiss Alpine resort.