A tiny elite controls vast economic power while billions are struggling to survive, according to the World Inequality Report
Global inequality remains at “extreme” levels, with fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires, the top 0.001%, now controlling three times more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity combined, according to the World Inequality Report 2026.
Compiled by more than 200 researchers and published on Wednesday, the study says the disparity is reflected across all categories, as the richest tenth of the world’s population now owns close to three-quarters of all wealth, while the poorest half holds barely 2%.
Income is split in a similar way. The top 10% earn more than the remaining 90% put together, while the poorest half capture less than a tenth of global income.
“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 wrote.
According to the research, a gender pay gap “persists across all regions,” with women capturing just over a quarter of global labor income, a share that has barely moved since 1990.
The global divide is visible long before people enter the job market, the report says. Average public education spending per school-age student is around $230 a year in Sub-Saharan Africa, versus $8,600 in Europe and $10,500 in North America and Oceania, reflecting a ratio of more than 40 to 1.
The authors argue that raising money from the top could shrink that divide. A 3% global tax on fewer than 100,000 centi-millionaires and billionaires would bring in about $750 billion a year, roughly equal to the combined education budgets of low- and middle-income countries.
Poorer countries are squeezed by a global financial system tilted toward rich states, the study showed. Advanced economies can borrow cheaply and earn higher returns abroad, letting them operate as “financial rentiers.” Around 1% of world GDP flows from poorer countries to richer ones each year through debt service, profit repatriation, and other financial flows, almost three times the amount of global development aid, the report concludes.
