I found the following explanation whilst searching for the reason that a country could be called "third world" and thought that it might be of interest to others.

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The First, the Second, and the Third World.
When people talk about the poorest countries of the world, they often refer to them with the general term Third World, and they think everybody knows what they are talking about. But when you ask them if there is a Third World, what about a Second or a First World, you almost always get an evasive answer. Other people even try to use the terms as a ranking scheme for the state of development of countries, with the First world on top, followed by the Second world and so on, that's perfect - nonsense.

To close the gap of information you will find here explanations of the terms.

The use of the terms First, the Second, and the Third World is a rough, and it's safe to say, outdated model of the geopolitical world from the time of the cold war.
There is no official definition of the first, second, and the third world. Below OWNO's explanation of the terms.

Four Worlds
After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with contrary views on government and the politically correct society:
1 - The bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, the "First World".
2 - The Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the "Second World".
3 - The remaining three-quarters of the world's population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the "Third World."
4 - The term "Fourth World", coined in the early 1970s by Shuswap Chief George Manuel, refers to widely unknown nations (cultural entities) of indigenous peoples, "First Nations" living within or across national state boundaries.

First there was the three worlds model
The origin of the terminology is unclear. In 1952 Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, wrote an article in the French magazine L'Observateur which ended by comparing the Third World with the Third Estate: "ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers État" (this ignored Third World, exploited, scorned like the Third Estate). Other sources claim that Charles de Gaulle coined the term Third World, maybe de Gaulle only has quoted Sauvy. However...

Definitions

The term "First World" refers to so called developed, capitalist, industrial countries, roughly, a bloc of countries aligned with the United States after word war II, with more or less common political and economic interests: North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.

"Second World" refers to the former communist-socialist, industrial states, (formerly the Eastern bloc, the territory and sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic) today: Russia, Eastern Europe (e.g., Poland) and some of the Turk States (e.g., Kazakhstan) as well as China.

"Third World" are all the other countries, today often used to roughly describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The term Third World includes as well capitalist (e.g., Venezuela) and communist (e.g., North Korea) countries as very rich (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and very poor (e.g., Mali) countries.

The term "Fourth World" first came into use in 1974 with the publication of Shuswap Chief George Manuel's: The fourth world : an Indian reality (amazon link to the book), the term refers to nations (cultural entities, ethnic groups) of indigenous peoples living within or across state boundaries (nation states).

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From here.

After hearing that list myself, I was then told there are only two worlds, the fairly developed ones, and the remaining less developed third of the world, which then became shortened to 'third world'.
Mind you, I'd have thought the undeveloped would have been over half, so maybe that was wrong as well. If anyone else has heard that reason, especially if there was a source, please let us know. I seem to remember mine was from the BBC radio.

I've never heard either of those explanations. I could ask my sister. Since she's an anthropologist, cultural and medical, and her focus is developing countries in Africa, I'm sure she'd know. I'm sure her input to the discussion would be interesting. I will say that I only rarely hear her use the phrase "third world" if ever. They are developing nations. And those which aren't "developing" are mostly refered to as "industrialized" though there are a few exceptions, I believe.

It so happens that the main explanations that Roos gives are, by and large, those I've heard, too. The link with the 'Third Estate' in ancien régime France is new to me and might go some way towards explaining why the expressions 'First World' and 'Second World' simply weren't and aren't used.

Yes, already in the 1970s there were complaints that the implication that all the poorer and/or non-industrialized countries were in some sense comparable was highly misleading. Some were industrializing fast and in a growth areas, while some were standing still. Then, there were the 'anonomalous', oil-rich but otherwise largely undeveloped countries of the kind Lothruin mentioned.

With the end of the Cold War the term has become even more meaningless.

Lothruin I`m sure that anyone that read the quote above through would be interested in your sisters input. Why not ask her to type something up so people not involved in work that requires knowledge and some use of such terminology can read what a professional has to say on the matter?

The reason I was searching for just what exactly the term "third world" refers to was because I had just told my brother in law how great Serbia was and he called the place third world. I don`t have faith in his knowledge of such things [lol or much else really] but decided to try and find out more about the term.

I have to agree that the use of the term third world is rapidly disappearing from general discussions and news stories and is quite passe but I feel the term "fourth world" is entirely apt when describing todays world of internally displaced peoples and edge of society cultures.

Ok, here's what my sister had to say. Interesting reading, I think.

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I'd love to contribute, but the darn thing won't let me register (it keeps saying "we cannot proceed. You are not allowed to register a User from the email domain ." I tried it with different browsers and different email domains. Don't know what's wrong. And since I can't seem to reply as a guest, well...

But here are my thoughts on the issue if you want to report them for me: The quote is more or less correct. The initial division was between first and second world (similar to "north" and "south" meaning capitalist and communist). But it was when the former colonies started gaining independence that that division became inadequate, and that's around the time "third world" was coined to account for poor countries and everybody else who wasn't capitalist or communist.

Then people started using the terms "developed" and "developing" when the UN and the WHO [World Health Organization, for anyone who doesn't know] were getting all caught up in helping out the "third world" and development theory really took hold, in the sixties and seventies. The terms became problematic in the eighties after structural adjustment programs (the IMF's "prescription for economic development") caused massive poverty in countries for which everyone had previously had every reason to hope for the best for. Like Zambia. Zambia was in high corn after the Rhodesian civil war, when they got independence, until the IMF's policies and other complicated world economic stuff caused crashes in commodities prices, including copper, on which Zambia relied. Then the IMF had them by the balls and forced them to devalue their currency, causing a downward spiral still spiraling today. Most of the capital for the loans, incidentally, come from OPEC nations, not the West, as many believe. Though inequitable trade relationships are certainly a specialty of the US and Europe. Hello, ag sanctions! While the IMF was telling countries like Mozambique to grow more sugar beet and maize, the US was (is) dumping the latter, and the EU would follow suit shortly after its formation with the former, in, where? Mozambique. And yet little debt relief in sight.

So the optimism of post-independence faded away, and ushered in the era of AIDS not so long later, and people started realizing that "developing" is maybe an overly-hopeful term, since many of these countries are actually regressing economically and according to most of the salient health indicators, and in terms of education and human rights. But an alternative to "developed" and "developing" hasn't really taken hold yet, though lots of people have started saying simply, "rich countries" and "poor countries." Some people also say OECD (as opposed to the still-popular-for-no-good-reason 'West' because it refers not only to the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, but also to Korea and Japan (and Mexico, too).

The middle east is a special difficulty, as are former USSR countries, because the Middle East has lots of cash but terrible human rights records overall and the former USSR has great infrastructure, but lots of violence and substance abuse, little industry, and no cash....so whatever new designation we decide on will have to, in some way, take these things into account. Then there are the Asian tigers which have great industry and are developing in a meaningful sense.

Ultimately, each of these designations has it's own subtle inclusions and exclusions depending on the political atmosphere at the time they come into use. In the current environment, "poor" and "rich" seem to be what most people mean even when they use other phrasing. And I support it because it doesn't hide the dirty truth behind a smiley face like "developing." Given that, I'll guess that they won't stick, and the economics-studies powers that be will probably find some sanitized terminology to institute.

And everyone should read Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty. It will be good for you. Like eating vegetables. But tasty, like vegetables with cheese sauce.

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