What makes a country tick?

Actually, what's REALLY been on my mind lately is... what constitues a third world country?

Triggered during a dinner conversation by an entertaining dinner companion, who was regaling me with tales of the countries he'd worked in. Specifically, Nigeria and China.

Ok, some of the horror stories I've heard about Nigeria are really... well.... apaprently true. Gak. And from a woman's perspective, it's horrendous. JB also had his own perspective which was eye-opening, because certain views he had, I would have never thought about that way. All I can say is that Singaporean women have no idea how good they have it. But I digress....

What makes a country a third world one? Infrastructure? Industries? Population demographics? Wasn't there supposed to be some criteria or something? How do you progress? Is this even used in the modern context of our world today?

So I did the first thing that comes naturally. I went to ask and found this nifty little site called OneWorld which seemed pretty objective to me. Then there's this long article I found online which had a fairly succinct summary :

The First World is the developed world - US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand. The Second World was the Communist world led by the USSR.

With the demise of the USSR and the communist block, there is no longer an official Second World designation, although Russia, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have "communist" governments.

The Third World is the underdeveloped world - agrarian, rural and poor. Many Third World countries have one or more developed cities, but the rest of the country is poor, rural and agrarian.

Eastern Europe should probably be considered Third World. Russia should also be considered a Third World country with nuclear weapons. China, has always been considered part of the Third World, although it is industrializing, has nuclear weapons, and has urban centers of intense development.

In general, Latin America, Mexico, Africa, and most of Asia are still considered Third World. The Asian tigers - South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand, except for their big cities, their maquiladora-type production facilities, a small middle class and a much smaller ruling elite should probably be considered Third World countries as well, since
their populations are overwhelmingly rural, agrarian and poor.

Some of the very poorest countries, especially in Africa, that have no industrialization, are almost entirely agrarian (subsistence farming), and have little or no hope of industrializing and competing in the world "marketplace", are sometimes termed the "Fourth World".

The term "Third World" is not universally accepted. Some prefer other terms such as - Global South, the South, non-industrialized countries, developing countries, underdeveloped countries, undeveloped countries, mal-developed countries, emerging nations.The term "Third World" is the one most widely used in the media today, but no one term can describe all less-developed countries accurately.

Hear that? No one term. Silly me for thinking there was a cookie cutter type of criteria banding to conform to. More reading material coming up; looks like tonight is going to be educational :)