I’ve read about it but don’t really understand the concept.
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It’s terminology used from the Cold War between the USA and the USSR that no longer really applies today.
The First World countries were the US and its allies. The Second World countries were the USSR and its allies. The Third World countries were the unaligned nations, which were primarily poor countries that had just been released from being colonized by European powers.
Today, we still use “Third World” to refer to those poorer countries that had previously been colonized by European powers and have been struggling to recover from that, and “First World” to refer to the US and its allies, but as the USSR no longer exists, “Second World” has fallen out of use.
When the term was first coined it was used to describe America and its allies (first world) the Soviet Union and its allies (second) and everyone else (3rd). Now a days it’s mainly just used to describe how developed a country is. A first would be America, second could be middle of the road countries like India, Albania, South Africa. Third would countries generally have low degrees of development like Somalia or South Sudan
It’s a hold over from the Cold War days.
First World are the developed (mostly white) democratic countries: England, USA, Canada, those guys.
Second World were the developed (still mostly white) communist countries: Russia herself, East Germany, much of Communist controlled Europe.
Third World was and still is used to refer to poor countries. With a little racial inferiority implied.
First world countries refer to countries that were aligned with the US and NATO during the cold war. Second world refers to countries aligned with the USSR and Warsaw Pact. Third world are countries that did not align with either. Third world is commonly used though to refer to poor countries with low standards of living. A more accurate term is developing nations.
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