Is chile a third world country


I have been uploading photos to my social media pages daily while on an epic journey through South America.  You know; the drill we all execute on vacation if we are active social media consumers – posting humorous or artistic photos, signs lost in translation, landscapes, architecture, and food – basically giving our followers a glimpse of life in a foreign land through our camera lens. One day I uploaded some photos and a video of funiculars in Valparaiso, Chile.  These are the numerous, somewhat rickety boxcar-like elevators which escalate people up steep mountainsides throughout the scenic and cultural port capital.  Valparaiso has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2003.

To my surprise, an acquaintance commented on my post thanking me for sharing the beauty of this “Third World” country.  This comment came recently after the USA’s president’s alleged judgment remark about “shithole” countries.  As I read my friend’s comment, I was not sure if he was being a smartass inferring that Chile qualifies to tumble under that umbrella moniker, or if he simply believed this cultured, developed, wine-producing, Latin-Euro country was actually a Third Planet country.  Was it? H

The World Bank In Chile

Green growth acceleration

Chile received the World Bank’s first-ever global loan to promote green hydrogen and support climate change mitigation efforts. The project seeks to boost investment in green hydrogen projects in Chile to help accelerate green growth and energy transition in the country and support its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Water resources management

Extensive work has also been done to address the country’s water challenges, a key element of development and resilience, including the approval of a loan to advance Chile’s Just Water Transition program and more sustainable and equitable water resources management.

Emission Reductions Payment

Chile received US$5.1 million from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) for reducing 1.03 million tons of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This was the first payment under Chile’s Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) with the FCPF, which provides access to up to US$26 million for reducing 5.2 million tons of emissions.

Disaster preparedness

To provide Chile with financial protection to mitigate potential

Third World

Third World countries practised non-alignment politics. However, in the mid of the 20th century, the nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact entered into a Cold War.

In 1952, Alfred Sauvy, a renowned French Demographer, wrote an article "Three Worlds, One Planet" for the L'Observateur. On the grounds of geopolitics and financial ability, he divided the countries into three categories: first, second, and third. The distinction between them is as follows.

  • First World: It was led by the U.S, comprising the Capitalist nations. It included economically forceful countries like the U.S., Australia, Western Europe, and Japan. These western countries possessed a steady democracy, strong economy, high accepted of living and optimum industrialization.
  • Second World: It comprises the Socialist nations of the Soviet Union like South America, South Africa, China, Cuba, Thailand, Turkey, and others. These nations were focused on peasants and communist workers.
  • Third World: The countries which did not participate in this frigid war are called Third nature countries. Most of these were the former colonies and were economically underdevelop is chile a third world country

    Information about Chile

    In a world of constant change, Chile is a beacon of economic and institutional stability:

    • Chile is at the forefront of Latin America and ranks alongside the most advanced economies in the world.
    • The economy has one of the world’s most business-friendly environments and has attracted a large number of well-known multinational and foreign investors with its open and competitive economy.
    • The economic framework includes an independent Central Bank, whose monetary policy is carried out based on an inflation-targeting regime, coupled with a free-floating exchange rate
    • A firm banking system, based on a sound regulatory framework, also helps to reduce domestic economic volatility.
    • Chile is one of the most open and integrated economies in the world, with trade agreements with more than 50 economies.
    • Chile has also made remarkable progress reducing poverty: since 1990 it has slashed its poverty rate to 13% from over 40% in the early 90s. 
    • Reflecting these institutional strengths, Chile became the first South American country to become a member of the OECD.

    Information about Chile

    Total population19,923,000 (2021 est.

    Time to stop referring to the “developing world”


    When working in an international financial institution, it is hard to find a document that does not consult to “developing countries” or “the developing world.” (Fortunately, it is now rare to find the term “third world”.) In the World Bank, this concept typically encompasses all 135 countries classified as low- or middle-income, whose 6.7 billion people are home to 84% of the world’s population.  

    Several arguments have been made against the use of this term, in part by one of us in a previous post on the World Bank’s Data Blog and in a longer treatment in Barros Leal Farias (2023). There has been progress in the past decade - for example, the Nature Development Indicators no longer provide aggregations by “developing” countries. Yet as use of the phrase continues, we revisit the reasons why we think we should stop using it. We finish with some suggested rephrasing and thoughts on why this matters.

    The term “development” is frequently used to describe the process in which children mature and grab up skills in a sequential way. Using the same phrase to describe countries can propose some level of hierarchy in matu