The gap between rich and poor has widened, with the planet's richest 1 percent owning 45 percent of its wealth while 44 percent of the population scrapes by on less than $6.85 a day, according to the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International.

Oxfam made the claim as political and business leaders gathered on Monday in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

Oxfam said the disparity between rich and poor has been "supercharged" since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, with the soaring United States stock market and higher food and energy prices because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

"We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost 5 billion people have become poorer," Amitabh Behar, Oxfam's interim executive director, told the Associated Press.

"Very soon, Oxfam predicts that we will have a trillionaire …Whereas to fight poverty, we need more than 200 years."

Behar said the planet's five richest people — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and investor Warren Buffett — have seen their fortunes increase by 114 percent since 2020, and the prospect of someone amassing $1,000 billion — a trillion — is now very real.

But the fast-growing wealth of a few has coincided with many people becoming poorer and as 3.6 billion people live below the poverty line.

The report said workers in low-income and middle-income countries, who provide 90 percent of the global workforce, receive only 21 percent of the planet's income, with the Global North controlling more than two-thirds of wealth while having just one-fifth of its population.

"Nearly 60 years after the end of the colonial period, the global economy remains structured to siphon wealth from the Global South to the Global North," the report, titled Takers Not Makers, observed.

It said the planet's wealthiest people are now an "aristocratic oligarchy" that saw its wealth increase by $2 trillion in 2024 — three times faster than in any previous year.

And 2024 saw the emergence of 204 new billionaires, to take the total to 2,770.

Oxfam said the world's richest 10 billionaires saw their wealth grow by a staggering $100 million a day during the past decade.

The organization said the world should guard against the amount of influence billionaires have over the decision-makers, with them now able to "shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit".

It called on the world to fight back by increasing taxation on the superrich.

"We present this report as a stark wake up-call that ordinary people the world over are being crushed by the enormous wealth of a tiny few," Behar added.