Sociology Plus
Developed World Definition
The developed world is a label for the group of wealthy industrialised nations — western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australasia. It belongs to a shifting vocabulary of global classification whose terms are periodically replaced, both because the phenomena they describe change and because labels gradually acquire derogatory connotations.
From Three Worlds to a Dated Scheme
The older three-fold scheme distinguished the First World (the original industrialised nations), the Second World (the communist bloc of eastern Europe), and the Third World (Asia and Africa). With the collapse of communism, the admission of several former communist states to the European Union, and the economic rise of Asian economies such as Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, and parts of Malaysia, this classification now looks distinctly dated.