Giving Compass' Take:

· According to the World Poverty Clock, and others, global poverty reduction is slowing down.

· How can philanthropy play a role in solving such a large-scale issue?

· Check out this are to learn more about the state of global poverty and what needs to be done to help.

During the last year, a new poverty narrative gained acceptance across the world. The trends in our global poverty predictions—which we published on the World Poverty Clock—were confirmed by a number of other sources, including the World Bank, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). By and large, the overall message is a discouraging refrain: Global poverty reduction is slowing down, Africa is now home to the majority of the world’s extremely poor (living on less than $1.90 per day in 2011 PPP), and Nigeria has become the most visible frontier in the fight against extreme poverty.

Following last month’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings, the World Poverty Clock has been updated to reflect newly available and revised data related to income distribution, national accounts, and GDP forecasts for nearly every country in the world. The resulting new estimates and forecasts on the state of global poverty, released today, point to a depressing new dynamic.

When the World Poverty Clock was launched exactly two years ago, on average, one person escaped poverty every second. Last year, the pace of poverty reduction slowed down to 0.8 people per second. Our latest projections show that the pace of poverty reduction has further slowed down to 0.6 people per second. This is a result of the slowdown in the global economy that is affecting several African countries negatively as well as the negative trends in important crisis countries such as Venezuela and Yemen.

Read the full article about global poverty reduction by Homi Kharas, Kristofer Hamel, Martin Hofer, and Baldwin Tong at The Brookings Institution.