Giving Compass' Take:

• Reuters reports on recent research that analyzes the concentration of wealth around the world and what that means for the current state of philanthropy.

• While foundations continue to grow, the stark wealth disparity is hard to ignore. What are funders doing to make sure that their fortunes are used to help those at the bottom?

• Here's how income inequality is a barrier to education and social mobility.

As the rich get richer, the world has entered an “age of philanthropy”, with education the most popular focus of some 260,000 foundations globally, researchers said on Thursday.

Increasing numbers of rich individuals, families and corporations are setting up foundations for social investment amid persistent inequality, said study author Paula Johnson of Harvard University’s Hauser Institute for Civil Society.

“(Due to) the rapid growth of wealth around the world, more individuals and families (have) the ability to create philanthropic capital,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns half of its wealth, up from 43 percent in 2008, propelled in part by gains in financial assets, like stocks and bonds.

Many super rich Americans have set up foundations which run their own programs or give grants, including Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffett, who heads the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, and the industrialist Koch brothers.

There are more than 15 million millionaires and close to 2,000 billionaires in the world, while 10 percent of the population live on less than $1.90 a day, said the report, which was funded by the Swiss bank UBS.

Globally, foundations have combined assets of $1.5 trillion — slightly more than the U.S. federal government’s 2018 budget — the report found in an assessment of 39 countries around the world, including in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Read the full article about what the rich are spending their money on by Lee Mannion at reuters.com.