Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
Take Back Power protesters outside London's Ritz Hotel last week after dumping horse manure beside the hotel's Christmas tree in a demonstration against wealth inequality. The World Inequality Report 2026 found that in almost every region, the top 1% was wealthier than the bottom 90% combined. File photo: Take Back Power/PA
Fewer than 60,000 people — 0.001% of the world’s population — control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity, according to data compiled by 200 researchers.
The authoritative World Inequality Report 2026 also found that the top 10% of income earners earn more than the other 90% combined, while the poorest half captures less than 10% of total global earnings.
Wealth — the value of people’s assets — was even more concentrated than income, or earnings from work and investments, the report found, with the richest 10% of the world’s population owning 75% of wealth and the bottom half just 2%.
In almost every region, the top 1% was wealthier than the bottom 90% combined, the report found, with wealth inequality increasing rapidly around the world.
“The result is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability,” the authors, led by Ricardo Gómez-Carrera of the Paris School of Economics, wrote.
The share of global wealth held by the top 0.001% has grown from almost 4% in 1995 to more than 6%, the report said, while the wealth of multimillionaires had increased by about 8% annually since the 1990s — nearly twice the rate of the bottom 50%.
The authors, one of whom is the influential French economist Thomas Piketty, said that while inequality had “long been a defining feature of the global economy”, by 2025 it had “reached levels that demand urgent attention”.
Reducing inequality was “not only about fairness, but essential for the resilience of economies, the stability of democracies, and the viability of our planet”. They said such extreme divides are no longer sustainable for societies or ecosystems.
Produced every four years in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme, the report draws on the biggest open-access database on global economic inequality and is widely considered to shape international public debate on the issue.
In a preface, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz repeated a call for an international panel comparable to the UN’s IPCC on climate change, to “track inequality worldwide and provide objective, evidence-based recommendations”.
Looking beyond strict economic inequality, it found that inequality of opportunity fuels inequality of outcomes, with education spending per child in Europe and North America, for example, more than 40 times that in sub-Saharan Africa — a gap roughly three times greater than GDP per capita.
Such disparities “entrench a geography of opportunity”, it said, adding that a 3% global tax on fewer than 100,000 centimillionaires and billionaires would raise $750bn a year — the education budget of low and middle-income countries.
Inequality was also fuelled by the global financial system, which is rigged in favour of rich countries, the report said, with advanced economies able to borrow cheaply and invest abroad at higher returns, allowing them to act as “financial rentiers”.
About 1% of global GDP flows from poorer to richer countries each year through net income transfers associated with high yields and low interest payments on rich-country liabilities, it said — almost three times the amount of global development aid.
On gender inequality, the report said a gender pay gap “persists across all regions”. Excluding unpaid work, women earn on average only 61% of what men earn per working hour. Including unpaid labour, that figure falls to just 32%, it added.
The report also highlighted the critical role played by capital ownership in the inequality of climate-changing carbon emissions. “Wealthy individuals fuel the climate crisis through their investments even more than their consumption and lifestyles,” it said.
Global data shows the poorest half of the global population accounts for only 3% of carbon emissions associated with private capital ownership, the report calculated, while the wealthiest 10% account for about 77% of emissions.
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