A new report by Oxfam America highlights the scale and pace of wealth concentration in the United States, showing that the collective wealth of the country’s ten richest billionaires increased by $698 billion over the past year. The findings are published amid continued debate over the widening gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the population.

Using Federal Reserve data covering the period from 1989 to 2022, the report calculates that the top 1 percent of U.S. households accumulated 101 times more wealth than the median household over those 33 years, and 987 times more wealth than households in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution. In absolute terms, this amounted to an average gain of $8.35 million per household for the top 1 percent, compared with $83,000 for the average household during the same period.

The report also notes that more than 40 percent of the U.S. population is classified as low income, earning less than 200 percent of the national poverty line. Nearly half of all children in the country fall into this category. When compared with the ten largest economies in the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development, the United States records the highest rate of relative poverty, the second highest rates of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second lowest life expectancy.

Oxfam America attributes these outcomes to long term policy choices. According to the report, systems such as the tax code, social safety nets, and worker protections have been weakened over time, enabling the accumulation of concentrated wealth and power. It argues that policies enacted under the Trump administration, including what it describes as a major tax bill passed in May, have contributed to what it calls one of the largest upward transfers of wealth in decades through tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations.

The report also stresses that the trend is not limited to one political party. It states that both Republican and Democratic administrations have played a role in expanding inequality, citing decades of bipartisan support for policies including tax reductions, changes to social welfare programs, and labor related reforms.

To address these issues, the report outlines policy recommendations focused on campaign finance reform and antitrust measures, changes to taxation aimed at wealthy individuals and corporations, strengthening social safety nets, and protecting unions. It notes that political resistance to such measures has been shaped by long standing attitudes toward taxation and welfare programs.

Oxfam America concludes that the data reflects policy driven outcomes rather than inevitability, pointing to examples of community level efforts to reduce inequality, while noting that national level progress has remained limited.