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2.3m in Italy are in the rich 'one percent' club

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2.3m in Italy are in the rich 'one percent' club
There are 2.3 million people in Italy who are among the world’s wealthiest one percent. Photo: Euros photo: Shutterstock"

Italy has the fourth largest share in Europe of the world’s richest 47 million people, according to a report from the British charity Oxfam.

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There are 2.3 million people in Italy who are among the world’s wealthiest one percent, according to the report released last week to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Italy has the fourth largest share in Europe after France (3.5 million), the UK (2.9 million) and Germany (2.8 million).

The United States leads the way, with 18 million people falling within the one percent bracket.

Oxfam used data from the Swiss bank Credit Suisse to produce its report, which found that the richest one percent of the global population owned 48 percent of the wealth in 2014.

Meanwhile, the richest 20 percent of people worldwide owned most of what was left, with the poorest 80 percent owning just 5.5 percent of the world's wealth.

With a net worth of €20.7 billion, the richest person in Italy is Michele Ferrero, the inventor of the famous chocolate spread Nutella.

But you don’t have to be a billionaire to make it into the top one percent: the data includes people with a wealth of over €690,172, which could simply mean owning a property outright.

Oxfam used the forum in Davos to urge world leaders to reduce poverty and inequality.

"Do we really want to live in a world where the one per cent own more than the rest of us combined?” Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International, said in a statement.

“The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast."

She added that over the past year, leaders including US President Barack Obama “talked more” about tackling extreme poverty and inequality but "we are still waiting for them to walk the walk." 

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