Why nobody can agree which countries count as developing
Qatar, Singapore and Kuwait rank among the richest places on Earth by almost any economic measure, yet they have been criticised for calling themselves developing countries at the World Trade Organization. The reason is simple: the WTO lets any country pick the label, and it comes with preferential treatment.
The phrase sounds precise but has no agreed definition. Broadly it means a country with a weaker industrial base and a lower score on the UN's Human Development Index, which blends income, life expectancy, literacy and more. Even the major institutions disagree. The International Monetary Fund looks mainly at financial integration and talks of markets rather than countries, so several European states were upgraded to advanced status simply by adopting the euro. By 2009 it also considered export diversity, which keeps oil-rich states with high incomes out of the advanced group.
The World Bank sorts economies by income per head, recalculated every July. For the 2027 fiscal year, a country earning under 1,135 dollars per person counts as low income, one above 14,375 as high income, with two middle bands between. In 2015 the Bank said the developing versus developed split had become less relevant and began phasing out the wording in favour of regions and income groups. Some prefer the term Global South.
Critics have long disliked the vocabulary. The historian Walter Rodney challenged it as early as 1973, comparing the United States with countries in Africa and Asia. The word can imply inferiority and assumes everyone wants to follow a Western path, which a few countries, such as Cuba and Bhutan, have chosen not to do; Bhutan's idea of gross national happiness is one proposed alternative yardstick.
Sub-groups try to capture specific handicaps. Small island developing states share remoteness, exposure to disasters and dependence on trade, while landlocked developing countries face their own costs. Such countries also tend to have younger populations and are expected to feel climate change more sharply than rich ones.
Source: Developing country
