Poor countries

In present-day English, the term Third World is used in reference to "the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America". The term usually suggests poverty and low level of industrial development and thus it is the opposite of the term developed nations. This usage is considered by some offensive.

According to Online Etymology Dictionary the term Third World was formulated in 1952 by French economic historian Alfred Sauvy to mean countries that were neither part of the West nor of the Soviet Bloc. Thus the term originally had a political meaning as it arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and their allies represented the Second World. This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and politically-related economic divisions.

The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world economic division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core" countries.

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