Richest 1 percent will own half of world's wealth by 2016 - Oxfam

More than half the world's wealth will be owned by the richest one percent of the population by next year as global inequality soars, according to a new report from Oxfam.

In a report released ahead of the World Economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam said the top tier had seen their share of wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014. On present trends, it will exceed 50 percent in 2016.

Putting the figures in perspective, Oxfam Australia chief executive officer Dr Helen Szoke said that inequality was growing at an alarming rate.

"In 2010, for example, it took 388 billionaires globally to match the wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion people,” she said. Now, in only four years, it only takes 80 billionaires to own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world."It has surprised us and it surprises us at a time where there's so much evidence that we should really be tackling this,” Dr Szoke said.

Though the explosion in inequality was partly due to large proportions of global wealth being inherited, many measures to ensure equality had been overriden by fast-changing technology.

“The actual global checks and balances that might have once achieved the kind of reasonable equality that occurred after the Second World War, have broken down. They're not coping with the way that business is down by the fast moving global economy, by the sort of digital world that we live in one way or the other,” she said.

"At present in the domestic context, and in many other contexts, the burden of tax falls on labour and consumption. If you have this concentration of wealth, we really need to look at capital and wealth tax,” Dr Szoke said.

"Stop the dodging, make sure that there are fair taxes that are paid by people. We also need to look actually look, at how those taxes are used, and that really goes back to the issues of social structures that are put in place as a safety net for people across the world, like a minimum income guarantee. Horrifyingly, we are a long way off that,” she said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has warned that unemployment will rise by 11 million in the next five years due to slower growth and turbulence. More than 212 million people will be jobless by 2019 against the present 201 million, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). "The global economy is continuing to grow at tepid rates and that has clear consequences,” ILO head Guy Ryder said in Geneva.

"The global jobs gap due to the crisis stands at 61 million jobs worldwide,” he said, referring to the number of jobs lost since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.

The ILO World Employment and Social Outlook - Trends 2015 report said an extra 280 million jobs have to be created by 2019 to close the gap created by the financial turmoil.

"This means the job crisis is far from over and there is no place for complacency,” Ryder said.

The job scenario improved in the United States, Japan and Britain but remained worrisome in several developed economies of Europe, the report said. "The austerity trajectory in Europe in particular has contributed dramatically to increases in unemployment,” Ryder said.The report said eurozone powerhouse, Germany could see unemployment rise to 5 percent in 2017 against 4.7 percent at present, while it was expected to fall just under the double-digit in number two eurozone economy, France.

- ABC