The statistic has become familiar through repetition, which is perhaps why it no longer produces the reaction it should. The wealthiest 1% of the global population now own more total wealth than the bottom 50% combined. That bottom 50% represents roughly four billion people. The combined wealth of those four billion people is exceeded by the holdings of approximately 80 million individuals at the top.

How did this happen? The answer is not a single event or a single policy but an accumulation of structural changes over four decades that each, individually, seemed manageable, and together produced an outcome that would have seemed extreme even to market economists of the mid-20th century.

The starting point is the relationship between capital and labour in the distribution of economic output. For most of the postwar period in wealthy countries, the share of national income going to wages held relatively steady, and the share going to capital — returns on investment, dividends, profits — moved in a parallel band. From roughly 1980 onward, the labour share began to decline and the capital share to rise. This shift was not enormous in percentage terms, but sustained over forty years it had a compounding effect: those who owned assets accumulated wealth from rising capital returns, while those who depended on wages saw their share of a growing economy shrink.

Asset price inflation amplified this effect substantially. Central bank policy following the 2008 financial crisis — sustained low interest rates and quantitative easing — was designed to stimulate economic activity. Its most measurable effect was to inflate the prices of financial assets: stocks, bonds, and real estate. Those who owned financial assets saw their wealth increase significantly. Those who did not — the majority of the population in most countries — received limited benefit from a recovery that was expressed primarily in asset prices rather than wages or public investment.

Tax policy played a crucial enabling role. Top marginal income tax rates fell sharply from the 1980s onward across most wealthy countries. Capital gains — the profits from selling appreciated assets — are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income in most jurisdictions, meaning that the primary mechanism by which the wealthy accumulate wealth is taxed more lightly than the mechanism by which most people earn theirs. Inheritance tax has been weakened or eliminated in many countries, facilitating the intergenerational transmission of accumulated advantage.

Corporate governance changes reinforced the same dynamic. The shift toward shareholder primacy — maximising returns to investors as the primary corporate obligation — redirected profits toward dividends and buybacks rather than wages and investment. Executive compensation structures tied to share price created incentives to boost short-term stock performance, often at the expense of employment, wages, and long-term investment.

The global dimension added a further layer. The integration of the world economy increased returns to capital, which can move freely across borders, while constraining wages for workers who cannot. The ability to locate production in low-wage economies, route profits through low-tax jurisdictions, and access global markets while employing labour under local conditions amplified the advantage of capital over labour at a global scale.

The 1%-versus-50% figure is the aggregated outcome of these intersecting forces. Each one of them was, to a significant degree, the product of policy choice. Each one of them is, in principle, reversible through policy choice. Whether that recognition produces different choices is the central economic and political question of the coming generation.