Giving Compass' Take:

• The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Data Lab collaborated on a model to understand trends in age and global poverty. The research revealed that there is a tremendous amount of young people currently living in poverty.

• With the Sustainable Development Goal target only ten years away, how can donors help accelerate global leaders work to address youth poverty?

• Learn about how young children face poverty, conflict and discrimination.

As global development leaders convene at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, messages related to inequality and climate change dominate global headlines and social media, fueled to a large degree by the global youth movement. In recent years, the concerns and worldviews of young adults have been increasingly occupying center stage in global debates. And they should. The energy, dreams, and demands of the world’s youth (young adults aged 15-24) can be the drivers of massive political, societal and economic shifts. Some of the most important trends expected to shape our global reality during the 21st century—such as the opportunities and challenges of the rapidly increasing cohort of African Youth and the on-going explosion of Asia’s middle class—bring this fact into stark relief.

In collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Data Lab has pioneered the development of a global poverty model. Based on survey data and national spending distribution forecasts, we’ve developed a method to apply Lorenz curves and regression models to obtain age-specific spending growth rates. Building on these growth rates and national demographic trends, we can calculate country-level poverty numbers by age. The data provides new insights into the landscape of poverty facing youth around the world.

Looking at the horizon to 2030, prospects for the world’s poorest youth will also be shaped by two very different economic realities: rapidly increasing urbanization rates, on the one hand, and a persistent legacy of rural poverty in several countries on the other.

Read the full article about young adults are still living in poverty by Kristofer Hamel and Constanza Di Nucci at Brookings.