It’s the first day of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, which means that Oxfam is releasing its annual shame-the-rich report. I’ve been rude about this report in the past, because I don’t believe that statistics of the form “the top X has as much wealth as the bottom Y” are particularly enlightening or helpful. After all, according to the standard methodology, my niece, who just got her first 50 cents in pocket money, has more money than the poorest 2 billion people in the world combined.

This year, however, Oxfam has switched tack. While their 76-page report does spend a little bit of time adding up the wealth of the poor, that’s not the focus, and as far as I can tell they’re no longer putting a huge amount of marketing muscle behind viral images featuring misleading statistics.

I give them a lot of credit for this, because outrage does sell. The annual Oxfam inequality report is one of the organization’s most significant global fundraisers, and by making it more serious and less virally punchy, they’re potentially leaving many millions of dollars on the table.

Maybe Oxfam is realizing that substance beats sound bites. This annual briefing has never been anything like 76 pages long before: as recently as 2015, it was just 12 pages long. Most people won’t read the whole report, of course, but they should, because it’s a powerful indictment of the forces exacerbating global inequality, backed up with real on-the-ground reporting.

Read the full article about Oxfam's new inequality report by Felix Salmon at causeandeffect.fm.