The ultra-rich divide: 53 billionaires hold more wealth than 32 million French people

While the world's powerful gather in Davos for the World Economic Forum, an inconvenient truth is emerging in France: since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017, the wealth of French billionaires has doubled, a gain of more than 220 billion euros. According to Oxfam's 2026 report entitled "Resisting the Reign of the Richest", relayed by France Info, these 53 very large fortunes now hold more wealth than 32 million people combined, or almost half the country's population.

It's an unprecedented rise: in 2025, the wealth of billionaires jumped three times faster than in the previous five years, reaching an all-time high with an increase of over 16%. The average is staggering: in 24 minutes, a billionaire earns the equivalent of the average annual income of a French person, estimated at 42,438 euros.

This explosion of ultra-richness coincides with a record poverty rate of 15.4% in France, or 11 million poor people."You have an intensification of poverty at the same time as we're exploding the scores in terms of ultra-richness," says Layla Abdelké Yakoub, Tax Justice and Inequality Advocacy Manager at Oxfam. These two phenomena are "two sides of the same coin".

At the same time, according to INSEE, income inequality will reach its highest level in 30 years by 2023. Between the richest 10% of French people and the poorest 10%, incomes range from 1 to 20, excluding social benefits. The French Gini coefficient (*) will reach 30 in 2024, making France more unequal than the European average (29.4).

The France focus of the Oxfam report reveals that the richest 10% of households hold almost half of the national wealth. This extreme concentration once again raises the question of tax justice.

Faced with this "intolerable" and"unacceptable" situation, the NGO is calling for the application of the Zucman tax (a minimum tax of 2% on the wealth of the 1,800 tax households with more than 100 million euros), a tax on super-inheritances and an overhaul of the ISF including a climate surtax.

Cécile Duflot, Executive Director of Oxfam France, sounds the alarm: "Either we come up with an orderly and democratic political response, or we run the risk of tipping the balance towards a more brutal expression of this feeling of injustice".

But let's be wary of over-generalizations: some billionaires are not hostile to the idea of being taxed more. "I've had discussions with people who have made their fortune alone. They're not at all hostile," says Duflot. "Refusing inequality is also being patriotic." The proposed Zucman tax law passed its first reading in the French National Assembly on February 20, 2025, sponsored by ecologist deputies Éva Sas and Clémentine Autain.

(*) The Gini coefficient is a statistical indicator measuring the level of inequality in the distribution of a variable (income, wages, wealth) within a population. It is expressed as a number between 0 and 100. 0 indicates perfect equality; 100 indicates total inequality.