What makes a third world

Without a middle class to fill the gap, there is almost no way for a person to escape poverty because there is no next step for them on the economic ladder. This also allows the wealthy to control all the money in the country. This is detrimental to the economy of the country, and both increases and helps to sustain the poverty running rampant throughout the country while allowing the upper class to keep their wealth to themselves.

These countries often accrue a copious amount of debt from foreign countries because of the constant aid they need from other countries to keep their economy afloat and provide some financial stability to the citizens of the country. The definition of a third world country has evolved from the political meaning during the Cold War to the economic meaning of today.

Photo: Wikipedia. Blog - Latest News. Second-World countries supported communism and the Soviet Union. Most of these countries were formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. Many countries of East Asia also fit into the Second-World category. Now, in part because the Soviet Union no longer exists, the definition of Third World is outdated and considered offensive.

Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, anthropologist, and historian, is credited with coining the term Third World during the Cold War. Sauvy observed a group of countries, many former colonies, that did not share the ideological views of Western capitalism or Soviet socialism. In the modern-day, most countries on Earth fall into one of three general categories that some refer to as developed, emerging, and frontier.

The world segmentations have somewhat migrated to fit within these categories overall. The developed countries are the most industrialized with the strongest economic characteristics. The emerging countries are classified as such because they demonstrate significant strides in various economic growth areas though their metrics are not as stable.

The frontier markets often closely mirror the old Third-World classification and often show the lowest economical indicators. The evolutions of the worldly segmentations have become historic and obsolete. This index includes the following countries:. The WTO divides countries into two classes: developing and least developed.

There are no criteria for these classifications so countries self-nominate, though statuses can be contested by other nations. The WTO segregation comes with certain rights for developing country status. For example, the WTO grants developing countries longer transition periods before implementing agreements that aim to increase trading opportunities and infrastructure support related to WTO work. The HDI measures and then ranks a country based on schooling, life expectancy, and gross national income per capita.

This list is reassessed every few years. These indicators are a combination of gross national income, human assets nutrition, life expectancy, secondary school education, adult literacy , and economic vulnerability population size, remoteness, merchandise export concentration, agriculture, exports, and natural disaster preparedness.

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This combination of confusion and possible insult has made Third World a largely obsolete term. Instead, most modern speakers and writers favor more accurate, inoffensive terms such as "developing countries" and "least developed countries" calculated by the United Nations or "low-income countries" based upon World Bank data.

As such, rather than presenting a list of modern Third World countries, we invite you to scroll down to our list of the world's least developed countries. Third World Countries Here are the 10 countries with the lowest human development indexes: Tuvalu 0 Somalia 0 Niger 0.