Highlighting the growing gap between the world's rich and the poor, a report by London-based charity organization Oxfam states that the number of billionaires has doubled since the 2008 financial crisis.
Oxfam's chief executive Mark Goldring said: "Inequality is one of the defining problems of our age. In a world where hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their families, a small elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes. The consequences of extreme inequality are harmful to everyone - it robs millions of people of better life chances and fuels crime, corruption and even violent conflict. Put simply, it is holding back efforts to end poverty."
According to the organization's "Even it Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality" report, the number of billionaires around the world doubled to 1,645 as of March 2014 from 793 in March 2009, CNBC reports. Oxfam stated that the rich are getting richer, while the poor are still "trapped in poverty" as global "inequality spirals out of control," The Independent reports.
Bank of England's chief economist Andrew Haldane and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also support the report. Oxfam notes that since 2009, more than one million women have died in childcare because they could not afford basic health care, and 57 million children worldwide are not receiving education in any form.
In a January 2014 report published by Russia Today, the World Economic Forum (WEF) had warned that the growing income inequality would end up threatening the global economy in a matter of 10 years.
The report was compiled by more than 700 experts from all over the world who warned that the issue would become the risk that is "most likely to cause serious damage globally in the coming decade," the report stated.
Even as hundreds of millions of people live in miserable conditions, without proper health facility or education due to their financial condition, the super-rich continue to amass wealth.
