Giving Compass' Take:

• 2019 started with the lowest prevalence of extreme poverty ever recorded in human history, but this Brookings post urges us to look at poverty reduction rates, which are slowing down.

• Africa in particular is stagnating when it comes to poverty reduction. How can funders in the U.S. and abroad help accelerate progress in the next year?

• Here's how we can understand women’s justice as a dimension of poverty.

2018 could be a landmark moment in understanding global poverty dynamics. In June, we reported the start of a new poverty narrative, one that brought the plight of Africa squarely into focus. In September, we also discussed an unprecedented tipping point in global wealth prospects: More than half the world is now middle class or richer, fueled by a rising Asian middle class. As Steven Pinker and others observed, the rise of the global middle class — and the implications on policies, industry, and political economy — might have been one of the most important “ignored” stories of 2018.

To prepare for the year ahead, data scientists at World Data Lab responsible for uncovering these findings have updated the World Poverty Clock to take into account recently released data and forecasts from the World Bank and IMF, as well as refinements in poverty measurement in India. The biggest headline from their work may be that when official numbers for India’s extreme poverty are published later this year, less than 50 million people will likely be living below $1.90 per day, compared to 268 million in 2011, the last year for which official data on Indian poverty are available.

Looking at poverty trends worldwide, World Data Lab now estimates that on New Year’s Day 2019, just under 600 million people across the world (excluding Syria) will live in extreme poverty. By 2030, this figure is expected to fall to some 436 million.

Read the full article about rethinking global poverty reduction in 2019 by Homi Kharas, Kristofer Hamel and Martin Hofer at Brookings.