Oxfam releases corporate driven inequality report

March 22nd, 2024

Oxfam America has released its corporate driven inequality report alongside its corporate inequality framework to help investors analyse how companies in their portfolios contribute to inequality.

The report, Inequality, Made in America, outlined the US’ role in driving the inequality crisis and said the country has been actively concentrating power and money in the hands of wealthy CEOs and shareholders while limiting the power of workers.

The research analysed the largest 200 public US corporation across 78 indicators.

It found the corporation are extracting more money for already wealthy shareholders, reinforcing gender and racial inequality in the workplace and worsening inequality through tax avoidance.

The charity also said corporations were deepening political divides through their actions and prioritising profits over planets.

The report was released in tandem with Oxfam’s Corporate Inequality Framework (CIF), which aims to provide e comprehensive research and analysis on companies’ individual contribution to inequality.

The framework said: “Up until now, most efforts to assess a company level contribution to inequality have been issue specific. The CIF fulfils a need for a holistic assessment of individual enterprises.

“We believe investors wield enormous power to hold the private sector accountable – to shareholders and stakeholders alike – and shape the direction of inequality in the US and beyond.”

The charity said it has identified a variety of pathways through which companies can affect inequality, including by business function, by sphere of influence or by stakeholder group, from micro level contributions to macro trends.

It said the lack of publicly disclosed data limited its ability to test the framework and that the next steps following its publication would be to continue to encourage companies to be more transparent about their operations and externalities.