Oxfam’s critics have dismissed the headline inequality statistics as misleading and suggest that they drastically overstate the scale of the problem. The organization has repeatedly defended its analysis and challenged such accusations.
The charity’s annual statistics rely on Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth report, which Oxfam itself said suffers from poor quality of data and may even underestimate the scale of wealth disparities.
Extreme Poverty
Citing World Bank research, Oxfam said reducing inequality has a bigger effect on lowering extreme poverty than economic growth. That analysis “shows that if countries reduced income inequality by 1% each year, 100 million fewer people would be living in extreme poverty by 2030,” it said.
Figures from the Washington-based lender show extreme poverty has declined drastically in the past two decades. They show the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day declined by 1.1 billion from 1990.
However, the World Bank warns that poverty reduction has slowed or even reversed in some countries. 736 million people still lived in extreme poverty in 2015, more than half of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.