Interesting project!
I think accurate information on global wealth distribution is something that is not easily determined. However, generally speaking it is true that the world's richest people have done very well throughout the entire pandemic while the majority of people have suffered greatly.
Going to add some sources here for the topic.
Most sources material I've come across is from a Oxfam study but there's some good data from Forbes and Inequality.org.
Oxfam
The wealth of billionaires has increased more since COVID-19 began than it has in the last 14 years, according to Oxfam. At $5 trillion, this is the biggest surge in billionaire wealth on record.
...
“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom,” said Bucher. “Vaccines were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to billions of people. The result is that every kind of inequality imaginable risks rising. The predictability of it is sickening. The consequences of it kill.”
- Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher
Oxfam Study: Inequality Kills (Published January 2022)
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/inequality-kills/
Forbes (April 30, 2021)
“Twenty million Americans lost their job in the pandemic,” Joe Biden remarked in his Wednesday night address to Congress. “At the same time, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion . . . and they’re now worth more than $4 trillion.”
That’s true, according to Forbes’ data—but the numbers are actually a bit richer. Total American billionaire wealth stands at $4.6 trillion as of the stock market close on April 28, by our count. That’s up 35% from $3.4 trillion when markets opened on January 1, 2020, just as Covid-19 was beginning to take the world by storm.
In other words, U.S. billionaires have gotten about $1.2 trillion richer during the pandemic.
Bloomberg (December 7, 2021)
the share of global wealth held by billionaires surged to a record during the Covid-19 crisis, according to a group founded by French economist Thomas Piketty.
About 2,750 billionaires control 3.5% of the world’s wealth, the Paris-based Global Inequality Lab said in a report Tuesday. That’s up from 1% in 1995, with the fastest gains coming since the pandemic hit, the group said. The poorest half of the planet’s population owns about 2% of its riches.
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“There is really this polarization on top of a world that was already very unequal before the pandemic,” Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab, said in an interview. He said billionaires accumulated 3.6 trillion euros ($4.1 trillion) of wealth during a crisis in which the World Bank estimates that some 100 million people have fallen into extreme poverty.
https://inequalitylab.world/en/
Inequality.org (October 18, 2021)
https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/
October 18, 2021 update
U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged by 70%, or $2.1 Trillion, During Pandemic; They Are Now Worth a Combined $5 Trillion
America’s billionaires have grown $2.1 trillion richer during the pandemic, their collective fortune skyrocketing by 70 percent — from just short of $3 trillion at the start of the COVID crisis on March 18, 2020, to over $5 trillion on October 15 of this year, according to Forbes data analyzed by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality (IPS).
Not only did the wealth of U.S. billionaires grow, but so did their numbers: in March of last year, there were 614 Americans with 10-figure bank accounts. Today there are 745.
The $5 trillion in wealth now held by 745 billionaires is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households estimated by the Federal Reserve Board.
The great good fortune of these billionaires over the past 19 months is even starker when contrasted with the devastating impact of coronavirus on working people. Almost 89 million Americans have lost jobs, over 44.9 million have been sickened by the virus, and over 724,000 have died from it.
*Increase in Wealth over 19 months of Pandemic (March 2020 - October 2021)
Elon Musk (up 751%)
March 2020: $20.6 billion
October 2021: $209.4 billion
Jeff Bezos (up 70%)
March 2020: $113.0 billion
October 2021: $192.2 billion
Bill Gates (up 35%)
March 2020: $98.0 billion
October 2021: $132.4 billion
Larry Ellison (up 111%)
March 2020: $59.0 billion
October 2021: $124.5 billion
Larry Page (up 137%)
March 2020: $50.9 billion
October 2021: $120.7 billion
Inequality.org (August 11, 2021)
"Global Billionaire Pandemic Wealth Surges"
https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-pandemic-wealth-surges/
The world’s 2,690 global billionaires saw their combined wealth rise from $8 trillion on March 20, 2020 to $13.5 trillion as of July 31, 2021, drawing on data from Forbes.
RE: FACT CHECK THIS: The COVID19 Pandemic Created The Fastest & Largest Wealth Transfer in Human History