Currently, Musk is the richest man on the planet, with a personal fortune of just under $US250 billion ($378 billion), according to Oxfam, which used figures from Forbes.

By contrast, the organisation said nearly 5 billion people have been made poorer since the pandemic, with many of the world’s developing nations unable to provide the financial support that richer nations could during lockdowns.

In addition, Oxfam said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent energy and food costs soaring, disproportionately hit the poorest nations.

With Brazil hosting this year’s G20 summit of leading industrial and developing nations, it was a “good time for Oxfam to raise awareness” about inequalities, said Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of inequality policy.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has put issues that concern the developing world at the heart of the G20 agenda.

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Oxfam said measures that should be considered in an “inequality-busting” agenda include the permanent taxation of the wealthiest in every country, more effective taxation of big corporations and a renewed drive against tax avoidance.

To calculate the top five richest billionaires, Oxfam used figures from Forbes as of November 2023. Their total wealth then was $US869 billion, up from $US340 billion in March 2020, a nominal increase of 155 per cent.

For the bottom 60 per cent of the global population, Oxfam used figures from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2023 and from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2019. Both used the same methodology.