According to the World Inequality Lab, the best-paid 10% of the world's population receive about 52% of global income, while the poorer half gets under 10%. For wealth the gap is even wider: the richest 10% own about three-quarters of it. These gaps play out both between countries and within each country.
That's the estimate from a WHO-led study published in The Lancet in 2024, covering the half-century since the Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched in 1974. It works out to about six lives saved every minute, mostly infants. The measles vaccine alone accounts for around 60% of those lives.
According to the World Gold Council, about 216,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in all of human history. Because gold is so dense (19.3 tonnes per cubic metre), it would fit in a cube about 22 metres on each side, roughly the height of a seven-storey building. Strikingly, about two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.