Last World

Last World refers to nation-states whose degree of economic development is less than what is commonly associated with the Third World.

Origin

The term Last World was coined in 2007 in an editorial piece written in "Sudan Stories" (Volume I, Issue 9) in order to better explain a country's degree of (non-)development. The author of the article posits that not every Less Economically Developed Country is alike, that is to say that the Third World designation applies to a host of countries whose degree of development varies sharply, and that any individual who has traveled to or worked in a Third World country knows that neither GDP indicators nor the United Nations Development Program's [http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ Human Development Indices] accurately capture or represent a country's true degree of development.

In Practice

The "Sudan Stories" editorial goes on to explain that there are countless factors -- orthodox and unorthodox -- that contribute to a country's total development picture. Some less commonly used but equally important examples are: abundance and positioning of mailboxes, garbage collection, quality and variety of restaurants, and existence of a tourism industry, to name a few. An analysis of these additional criteria determined to the authors that certain countries whose degree of economic development is significantly lower than what is considered average in the Third World should be referred to as nothing other than the Last World.

See also

* First World
* Least Developed Countries
* Human Development

External links

* [http://www.undp.org United Nations Development Program]