Billionaires are now 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens, according to a new Oxfam report released today as world leaders and corporate elites meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
This extreme concentration of political power, Oxfam warns, is hollowing out democracies, weakening public institutions, and driving growing anger and unrest across the world, including in the Philippines.
The report “Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power” analyzes how the super-rich are securing political power to shape the rules of our economies and societies for their own gain and to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of people around the world.
The rise in billionaire involvement in politics coincides with a historic explosion in their wealth. In 2025 alone, global billionaire wealth grew by more than 16% to reach US$18.3 trillion—the highest level ever recorded. Since 2020, billionaire wealth has increased by 81% even as living conditions for billions of people have stagnated or worsened since the pandemic began.
Globally, one in four people regularly do not have enough food to eat, and nearly half the world’s population lives in poverty. Oxfam warns that the combination of extreme economic inequality and political exclusion is creating a dangerous and unsustainable crisis for democracies.
“The widening gap between the rich and the rest is at the same time creating a political deficit that is highly dangerous and unsustainable,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
A World Values Survey of 66 countries found that almost half of all people polled say that the rich often buy elections in their country.
“Governments are making wrong choices to pander to the elite and defend wealth while repressing people’s rights and anger at how so many of their lives are becoming unaffordable and unbearable,” Behar said.
Corruption furthering inequality
In the Philippines, inequality is becoming increasingly visible and politically explosive. According to Forbes, the combined wealth of the country’s 50 richest individuals rose by 6% to US$86 billion in August 2025, up from US$80.8 billion the previous year.
This concentration of wealth stands in sharp contrast to the realities faced by millions of Filipinos coping with stagnant wages, rising rice and fuel prices, overcrowded public hospitals, and repeated displacement due to floods and typhoons.
Public anger intensified last year after corruption scandals revealed that billions of pesos earmarked for flood control projects, meant to protect communities repeatedly submerged by climate-driven disasters, were allegedly siphoned off by corrupt officials and contractors. The revelations triggered nationwide protests and garnered international attention.
“Filipinos are on the frontlines of climate disasters, yet decisions about our safety are increasingly shaped by wealth and political connections. Inequality becomes deadly when greed determines who is kept safe and who is left to suffer the consequences of disasters,” said Oxfam Pilipinas Executive Director Maria Rosario “Lot” Felizco.
“The growing concentration of wealth and political power undermines trust in public institutions. Addressing inequality in the Philippines requires not only economic reform, but decisive action to prevent money from capturing our democracy,” Felizco said.
The Philippines remains the 15th most unequal country globally and among the countries with the starkest divide in Southeast Asia.
Oxfam warns that democratic backsliding is seven times more likely in highly unequal countries, as captured institutions fail to respond to public needs.
Oxfam is calling on governments to confront the political power of extreme wealth by:
- Realistic and time-bound National Inequality Reduction Plans, with well-established benchmarks and regular monitoring of progress.
- Effectively taxing the super-rich to reduce their power, including with broad-base taxes on income and wealth at high enough rates to reduce massive levels of inequality.
- Stronger firewalls between wealth and politics including by tougher regulations against lobbying and campaign financing by the rich, ensuring more media independence, and banning hate speech.
- Accountability for the political empowerment of ordinary citizens, including stronger protection for people’s freedoms of association, assembly and expression and for civil society organisations and trade unions.
