Briefs

Fair Taxes, Stronger Futures

Making corporations and the ultrarich pay their fair share for a more equal society

Guaranteed Income: Securing the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living

A guaranteed income can dramatically reduce poverty and inequality, advance gender and racial justice, and support workers. By providing direct cash assistance without onerous conditions or eligibility requirements, it can help create a more equitable future.

Oxfam America recognizes the human right to an adequate standard of living. To fulfill this right and address inequality, policymakers should support local guaranteed income initiatives and work toward a federal income guarantee. By providing unconditional cash transfers, a guaranteed income would represent a sharp break from the punitive, highly conditional, and inadequate safety net programs that allow poverty and extreme inequality to persist. It can break down the structural barriers that perpetuate racial and gender disparities and help create a more just economy.

Federal Jobs Guarantee: Fulfilling the Human Right to Dignified Work

By providing decent work to all who seek it, a federal jobs guarantee could reduce poverty and inequality, advance gender and racial justice, protect workers’ rights, and provide critically needed social services.

Oxfam America recognizes the fundamental human right to dignified work and the critical role of the public sector in helping achieve that right. To that end, a federal jobs guarantee can help fulfill workers’ rights, strengthen the economy, and reduce racial and gender inequalities.

Baby Bonds: Reducing Economic, Racial, and Gender Inequality

By providing vital resources to all children when they reach adulthood, baby bonds can reduce inequality, promote economic security, and help close race and gender wealth gaps.

Oxfam America recognizes the human right to an adequate standard of living and calls on policymakers to support proposals for baby bonds, which can ensure that all young adults have the resources they need to be economically secure. Alongside measures that tax the rich, redistribute economic power, and invest in public services, baby bonds can alleviate the effects of policies that exacerbate inequality and deny marginalized communities the opportunity to build wealth.

Carbon Inequality Kills

Why curbing the excessive emissions of an elite few can create a sustainable planet for all

Climate Finance Unchecked: How much does the World Bank know about the climate actions it claims?

Oxfam finds that for World Bank projects, many things can change during implementation. On average, actual expenditures on the Bank’s projects differ from budgeted amounts by 26–43% above or below the claimed climate finance. Across the entire climate finance portfolio, between 2017 and 2023, this difference amounts to US$24.28–US$41.32 billion. No information is available about what new climate actions were supported and which planned actions were cut.

Now that the Bank has touted its focus on understanding and reporting on the impacts of its climate finance, it is critical to stress that without a full understanding of how much of what the Bank claims as climate finance at the project approval stage becomes actual expenditure, it is impossible to track and measure the impacts of the Bank's climate co-benefits in practice.

The Bank should improve its reporting practices, undertake a climate finance assessment on closed projects, standardize how it reports on climate finance in projects and create a public climate finance database.

A webinar was hosted on October 17, 2024 to launch this report and you can access the recording here.

This page was updated on November 1, 2024 to address an error in the accompanying data. This change has no impact on the findings of the report.

Oxfam's report sought to highlight the need for greater transparency around impacts, and to encourage post-project assessments. No claim was made of missing money, despite some misinterpretations of our findings. Read more here: "8 questions you had about Oxfam's World Bank climate finance report - answered"