Comments from the Adam Smith Institute's Head of Research Ben Southwood on Oxfam's inequality report – featured in two articles in The International Business Times.
Oxfam's report into global inequality is "very misleading" and uses an over simplistic methodology, according to the Adam Smith Institute.Ben Southwood, head of research at the right-leaning thinktank, told IBTimes UK that the research, which claimed by 2016 the richest 1% of people in the world will own over 50% of its wealth, painted a different picture to what is actually happening.
The researcher said by using a measure of net wealth the Oxfam study failed to capture all assets, citing human capital as a missing one.
Instead the focus should be on the bottom and what policies can best lift people out of the kinds of absolute poverty seen in parts of Africa, where some people cannot afford to house or feed themselves.
Ben Southwood, head of research at libertarian thinktank the Adam Smith Institute, said of the Oxfam report that it is "not clear why we should care all that much about rising global wealth inequality, when it has come with unprecedented declines in global poverty".
"Hundreds of millions have escaped penury in India and China, but it is not just there where global living standards have been rising — African poverty fell 38% between 1990 and 2011," he said.