According to a press briefing prepared by Oxfam, the 100 richest billionaires in the world added $240 billion to their annual incomes in 2012 – enough to end extreme poverty four times over. The Brookings Institution had earlier calculated that ending extreme poverty (supplementing the income of each poor person in the world to bring their daily income up to $1.25/day) would require around $66 billion per year (see report).

The Oxfam report, released for the 2013 World Economic Forum at Davos, points out that inequality has risen dramatically in the past 30 years. This is harmful, they say, because extreme wealth and inequality is economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive, environmentally destructive, and unethical. They call for a goal of ending extreme wealth by 2025, arguing that in a world of finite resources, we cannot end poverty unless we reduce inequality.