Data released today has revealed that the world's eight richest billionaires share the same amount of money as half the global population combined. 

The data - released in a report by Oxfam - comes out on the same day as the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The event will be attended by the world's top political and business leaders.

Speaking on Premier New Hour, Johan Eldebo, Senior Humanitarian Policy Adviser at World Vision, said the figures were "no surprise" and that it is important to examine the root cause of why so many people are living in poverty.

"We clearly have a global economic system that allows this to happen," Eldebo said, "We need to look beyond the numbers at what the actual consequence is for this because what we're seeing from our work is clearly we have 3 billion people who have very little. People are going hungry, children are unhealthy and families are unable to send their kids to school and that's the real story behind the numbers."

Eldebo added that "given that we have this amount of wealth on our planet at the moment, we do have the resources to address many of these problems. What we need to do is to increase the will of the people to support those who are the most in need. That is something we all have within our power to do."

The list of billionaires includes Bill Gates - founder of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation who has already given away billions of dollars to charity as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who pledged to give away 99 per cent of his wealth during his life time in 2015.

Listen to Anthony Bushfield speak to Eldebo here: