Oxfam: Reduce inequality by 12pc to save Kenyans from poverty

Nairobi; Kenya: Three million people in Kenya could be saved from extreme poverty in the next five years if the country reduced inequality levels by 12 per cent, an Oxfam report says.

According to the globally-renowned aid and development charity, inequality was holding back efforts to end poverty and called it one of the “defining problems of our age”.

It says governments around the world have been guilty of a naive faith that wealth going to those at the top will automatically benefit everyone. “That’s not true - it is their responsibility to ensure the poorest are not left behind.” Oxfam has called on governments to share the tax burden fairly and tackle tax dodging, promote women’s economic equality and rights and achieve universal free public services by 2020.

“A small tax on billionaires, whose number has doubled in recent years, would raise enough to ensure an education for every child in the world and slow the rise in inequality, a report published last week. Oxfam said that while the world’s richest people had recovered quickly from the global financial crisis, the benefits of economic growth were not being shared with the majority, including hundreds of millions trapped in poverty.

poorest half

The world’s richest 85 people, who are worth as much as the poorest half of the global population, saw their collective wealth increase by $668 million a day - almost half a million dollars a minute - over the last year, the Oxfam report found.

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Oxfam Chief Executive Mark Goldring said a wealthy minority around the world were taking “an ever-increasing share of the pie”, and called on world leaders to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

The number of billionaires in the world has risen to 1,645 in 2014 from 793 in 2009, according to the report, which cited American business magazine Forbes. The report calculated that taxing billionaires 1.5 per cent of their wealth over $1 billion could raise $74 billion a year, enough to get every child in the world into school and to deliver health services in the world’s poorest countries.