Giving Compass' Take:

• From middle class expansion to positive trends in girls' education, Brookings takes a look at what its scholars have learned over the past year and how it might apply to the future.

• What might funders who work with advocates and policymakers internationally take away from these lessons? Is there a chance to save multilateralism?

• Let’s rethink what international development really means.

As 2018 draws to a close, we have compiled a sampling of research and findings from Brookings scholars working in our Global Economy and Development Program over the past year. This list is not comprehensive, and we encourage you to catch up on all of the latest Global research here.

Homi Kharas, Kristofer Hamel, and Martin Hofer updated the narrative about trends in global poverty. Drawing from their World Data Lab and World Poverty Clock projections, they first explain how extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in Africa, with Nigeria overtaking India as the country with the largest number of extreme poor. Second, for the first time ever, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty: just over 50 percent of the world’s population, or some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered “middle class” or “rich.”

Furthermore, extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in a set of countries that have achieved only limited development success in recent decades. In research from February 2018, Geoffrey Gertz and Homi Kharas identify 31 severely off track countries, and explain how they can get back on track and achieve SDG 1. In a separate piece published in September, Homi Kharas and Rebecca Winthrop explained that a quality education is one of the most effective solutions for getting these countries back on track.

Read the full article about lessons in international development from 2018 by David Batcheck and Molli Ferrarello at Brookings.