Third World Countries

(noun)

Those countries not aligned with the west or the east during the Cold War, especially the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Related Terms

Examples of Third World Countries in the following topics:

  • Least Industrialized Countries

    • The world's least industrialized countries have low income, few human resources, and are economically vulnerable.
    • In contrast to industrialized and industrializing countries, the world's least industrialized countries exhibit extremely poor economic growth and have the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) measures in the world.
    • In the past, countries that are now labeled as LDCs were known as "third world" countries.
    • Third world countries were undeveloped countries that were neither major players in the capitalist world market nor communist states under the USSR.
    • Most current scholars consider the term "third world" to be outdated.

  • Unequal Access to Education

    • However, the United States is ranked 37th in the world in education spending as a percentage of gross domestic product.
    • All but seven of the leading countries are in the third world and ranked high because education spending makes up proportionally more of a low GDP.
    • However, the United States is ranked 37th in the world in education spending as a percentage of gross domestic product.
    • All but seven of the leading countries are in the third world, ranked high because of a low GDP.
    • U.S. public schools lag behind the schools of other developed countries in the areas of reading, math, and science.

  • Dependency Theories

    • Countries have developed at an uneven rate because wealthy countries have exploited poor countries in the past and continue to do so today through foreign debt and foreign trade.
    • For example, between 1970 and 2002, the continent of Africa received $540 billion in loans from wealthy nations—through the World Bank and IMF.
    • Countries cannot focus on economic or human development when they are constantly paying off debt; these countries will continue to remain undeveloped.
    • The governments of poor countries invite these TNCs to invest in their country with the hope of developing the country and bringing material benefit to the people.
    • Explain malnourishment and hunger in the "third world" through dependency theory

  • Thinking Globally

    • The world-system refers to the international division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries.
    • Core countries focus on higher-skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production, and the extraction of raw materials.
    • For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout the last few centuries, this status has passed from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and, most recently, to the United States.
    • Poor countries are thus in a continual state of dependency to rich countries .
    • Hybridization is a similar idea, emerging from the field of biology, which refers to the way that various sociocultural forms can mix and create a third form which draws from its sources, but is something entirely new.

  • World-Systems Theory

    • World Systems Theory posits that there is a world economic system in which some countries benefit while others are exploited.
    • World Systems Theory, like dependency theory, suggests that wealthy countries benefit from other countries and exploit those countries' citizens.
    • In contrast to dependency theory, however, this model recognizes the minimal benefits that are enjoyed by low status countries in the world system.
    • Core countries own most of the world's capital and technology and have great control over world trade and economic agreements.
    • Produce a map of the world that shows some countries as core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral according to Wallerstein's theory

  • Distribution of Wealth and Income

    • A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations reports that the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world total.
    • The bottom half of the world adult population owned 1 percent of global wealth.
    • On an international level, wealth is distributed unequally between nations, which are stratified in a world economic order.
    • Examples of this practice go back at least to the Roman republic in the third century B.C., when laws were passed limiting the amount of wealth or land that could be owned by any one family.
    • This pie chart shows the global distribution of wealth among countries, illustrating the point that a small number of countries hold the majority of global assets.

  • Gender and Social Movements

    • The movement's priorities vary among nations and communities and range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country or to the glass ceiling (the barrier that prevents minorities and women from advancing in corporate hierarchies) in another.
    • Finally, the third-wave of feminism began in the early 1990s.
    • A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to much of the third wave's ideology.
    • Since 1975 the UN has held a series of world conferences on women's issues, starting with the World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City, heralding the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985).
    • These divisions among feminists included: First World vs.

  • Industrializing Countries

    • Brazil's economy must continue to grow if the nation's standards of living are to rise and if the nation is to become a more prominent figure in the world economy.
    • An industrializing country, also commonly referred to as a developing country or a less-developed country, is a nation with a low standard of living, undeveloped industrial base, and low Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries.
    • Industrializing countries have HDIs between the most and least industrialized countries in the world .
    • According to research from the World Bank, one challenge facing industrializing nations is how to successfully export products when they do not have pre-existing infrastructures to facilitiate international trade.
    • Explain why some scholars use the term 'less-developed country' instead of 'industrializing country'

  • Global Inequality

    • This reflects Immanuel Wallerstein's theory that suggests that how a country is integrated into the capitalist world system is the key feature in determining how economic development takes place in that country.
    • The world economy is a system divided into a hierarchy of three types of countries: core, semiperipheral, and peripheral.
    • Core countries own most of the world's capital and technology and have great control over world trade and economic agreements.
    • Based on the changing nature of the world economy, production is divided into small pieces, each of which can be moved by a Transnational Corporation (TNC) to any country in the world that can provide the best deal on capital and labor.
    • There are about 65,000 TNCs across the world today.

  • Global Aging Trends

    • This translates into a greater percentage of the world's population falling above the age of 65, as illustrated in the figure below.
    • However, the rate at which the world's population is aging is not uniform across countries, and some countries have actually seen decreasing life expectancies, largely as a result of AIDS.
    • The least developed countries are also the youngest countries as life expectancies are substantially lower.
    • More developed countries have older populations as their citizens live longer.
    • Less developed countries have much younger populations.