• The world's 2,153 billionaires have as much wealth as 60% of the world's population, or 4.6 billion people, Oxfam says.
• The number of billionaires has doubled in a decade as income and wealth inequality has widened, the anti-poverty group says.
• The richest 22 men in the world — including Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates — own more wealth than all the women in Africa, Oxfam found.

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Wealth inequality is growing to bigger extremes, with the world's 2,153 billionaires now claiming as much wealth as 60% of the world's population, or 4.6 billion people, according to a new report from anti-poverty group Oxfam.

The number of billionaires has doubled in the past decade, thanks partly to government policies such as the 2017 U.S. tax overhaul, which cut taxes for America's rich and corporations, as well as the strong stock market, the report noted. But that's creating a global economy where the ultra-rich are increasingly veering off from the rest of the world's population, Oxfam says.

Its report will be released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which begins Tuesday and draws many of the billionaire class that's singled out in the report. This year, 119 of the world's richest people — including Bridgewater Associates LP founder Ray Dalio, worth more than $16 billion — will be in attendance, representing a net worth of more than $500 billion, according to Bloomberg News. The conference's theme this year is "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World," and panels will include topics such as inequality and climate change. Since Oxfam started studying the dynamics of wealth inequality in 2011, the wealth concentration at the top has only intensified, Kripke said. That stems from dynamics such as stagnant wages for the typical worker, combined with the 2017 tax changes that slashed U.S. tax rates for the very rich and corporations.
For instance, average wages in the Group of Seven countries — developed economies including the U.S., Canada and Germany — rose 3% from 2011 to 2017, Oxfam said. But during that same period, stock dividends rose 31%, a trend that favors the wealthy given that the richest 1% own half of all stocks..