The term was originally used to either distinguish countries non-aligned with either capitalism or communism during the cold war but has since gained an economic connotation and become synonymous with "poor".
The Philippines is a capitalist country and consequently doesn't fit the first definition; it most definitely is not poor, so it also doesn't fit the last.
To put that in perspective, Thailand ranks 23rd by GDP, has a literacy rate in the high 90s and has an unemployment rate of around 1%.
The average professional does make around half of what they would in the US, but their taxes are lower and their cost of living is also half or less. The health care cost/quality ratio makes many countries look barbaric.
I think "third world" could be safely replaced with "economy I know nothing about" in the majority of cases.
So jumping down someone's throat for calling the RP a poor country looks a little premature to me. (I lived there for two years and my gut feeling doesn't disagree with that, although if you've only been to Makati I can see how you might not realize that.)
That said, to me "3rd-world" has pejorative connotations regardless of income levels, and I also wish the submitter had left the title alone.
Quote:
"Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards on the whole between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using just exchange rates which may distort the real differences in income."
Thailand ranks #24, #23 and #24 in those lists. I rounded up. You picked a list to illustrate your point (that Thailand and the Philippines are poor?). I picked one that better reflected GDP vs cost of living, which was my point.
I wasn't jumping down his throat specifically, I was saying that the term "third world" as applied to Thailand (and other countries) is a worthless description today. As the original commenter pointed out, it's related to the geopolitics of the Cold War. People often swap it for "developing nation" which is a euphemism for "undeveloped by Western standards" which I think is condescending and a culturally biased value judgement. When someone says "third world" I would say they either don't really understand the economics involved or are deliberately being derogatory to another people/nation. I think that's pretty safely called ignorance.
If you're looking to compare quality of life, while not perfect, I would imagine the Human Development Index would be closer in line with average experience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
Does that make them poor?
By contrast, Thailand's GDP per capita is just under $4k/year (PPP adjusted), about 1/20 that of Liechtenstein.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_shows_the_bes...