Report: The richest 1% get richer and are responsible for up to 40% of emissions

The richest one hundredth, or one percent, of the world’s population is responsible for approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, when the emissions related to their ownership are included.

The result can be seen from the World Inequality Report published a few weeks ago (World Inequality Report 2026).

“The poorest half of the world’s population causes three percent of the world’s carbon emissions, if carbon emissions caused by ownership are taken into account. Using the same calculation method, the richest ten percent are responsible for 77 percent of carbon emissions,” the report says.

It is the third time that the Paris-based World Inequality Lab publishes its report on world inequality. 200 researchers from different parts of the world participate in the survey.

Report According to the report, wealth in the world has risen to a historically high level, but is distributed very unevenly.

The richest 0.001 percent, or one hundred thousandth, or more precisely, 60,000 people own three times more property than the poorest half of the 8.3 billion people on Earth.

The wealth of the super-rich has clearly developed faster than other population groups.

The share of the wealthiest 0.001 percent of the world’s wealth has grown from four percent in 1995 to more than six percent, the report states.

In almost every region, the richest one percent own more than the other 90 percent combined, the report states.

“The presented statistics are striking. The richest tenth of the world’s population owns almost three-quarters of all assets, while the poorest half of the world’s population owns barely two percent”, economists Jayati Ghosh and Joseph E. Stiglitz write in the foreword of the report.

In the report, the development of inequality has been studied in 40 countries. Compared to Europe, inequality is greatest in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

in Finland the biggest change in the difference between the taxed incomes between the highest earning tenth and the lowest earning 50 percent occurred in 1993, when the taxation of capital and earned income was differentiated from each other.

the core As “new” findings, the report highlights a number of findings related to gender, regions and education.

Globally, women’s wages are 61 percent of men’s wages, but women’s share drops to 32 percent if so-called free work such as housework and child and elderly care is included.

“In all regions, women work more hours than men, if unpaid work is taken into account,” the summary of the report states.

In Western democracies, the report draws attention to the divergence of income and education levels from the traditional model – the previous class division has moved to a development where the highly educated lean to the left, while high-income voters remain in line with the right.

Report also draws attention to the higher interest rates and fees charged from poor countries in the financial economy.

“On a global level, approximately one percent of the global gross domestic product flows annually from poor to rich countries.”

According to the researchers, the amount is almost three times the size of global development aid.

Report points out that those with wealth in the hundreds of millions or billions typically pay relatively less tax than the majority of the population.

“This not only weakens the fairness of taxation. It deprives societies of the resources needed for education, healthcare and climate action,” the report states.

It calls for, among other things, the extension of progressive taxation more fairly to the ultra-rich and stronger public investments in education, health care and social security.

The main compilers of the report are Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, Lucas Chancel, Rowaida Moshrif and Thomas Piketty.