Currently, Musk is the richest man on the planet, with a personal fortune of just under $250 billion ($378 billion), according to Oxfam, which used figures from Forbes.
By contrast, the organization said nearly 5 billion people have become poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world's developing countries unable to provide the financial support that wealthier countries can provide during lockdowns.
Protesters dressed as clowns demonstrate against the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.credit: Bloomberg
In addition, Oxfam said Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which led to higher energy and food costs, disproportionately harmed poorer countries.
Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, said that with Brazil hosting this year's G20 summit of leading industrialized and developing nations, it was “a good time for Oxfam to raise awareness” about inequality.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has placed issues of concern to the developing world at the heart of the G20 agenda.
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Oxfam said measures that should be taken into consideration as part of the “undermining inequality” agenda include imposing permanent taxes on the wealthy in every country, more effective taxation of large corporations, and a renewed campaign against tax evasion.
To calculate the five richest billionaires, Oxfam used Forbes figures from November 2023. Their total wealth then stood at $869 billion, up from $340 billion in March 2020, a nominal increase of 155 per cent.
For the poorest 60 percent of the world's population, Oxfam used figures from UBS's 2023 World Wealth Report and Credit Suisse's 2019 Global Wealth Data Book. Both used the same methodology.
