Definition of a Developing Country

The UN establishes the well-known Index of Human development or HDI to classify the nations of the planet. This index includes a series of parameters on the quality of life in general, such as GDP per capita, the level of literacy in the population adult and the average age of the deceased. These indicators they are the concrete expression of three fundamental criteria: a long and healthy life, an adequate level of knowledge and a decent standard of living.

With the data that are finally obtained, it is possible to order nations into three large groups: developed, underdeveloped and developing.

Developing nations according to the 2017 UN report

The first UN HDI report was presented in 1990 and has been published regularly since then.

If we focus on developing countries, some illustrative examples are the following: Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Mexico, Poland, India or Argentina. All of them fall into this category because despite their obvious economic progress, they present some structural problems, such as

inequality social, pockets of poverty and high rates of criminality.

From the point of view of the UN, developing nations share some characteristics: a per capita income of more than $ 8,000 per year, a economy in a transition phase, uneven technological development, a high public deficit and a high unemployment rate.

A questioned category

It could be said that these countries incorporate aspects of the first world and, at the same time, other aspects of the Third World. It must be taken into account that the concept of human development is highly debatable, since the situation Economic is a factor of the utmost importance but so is corruption, institutional fragility wave safety citizen.

If we take Mexico as a reference, it is a nation with evident economic advances and, in parallel, with very worrying crime rates

Institutions such as world Bank, the International Monetary Fund or Oxfam consider that the category of developing country used by the UN it is inappropriate and should be replaced by another name that more objectively reflects the well-being of nations.

Along these lines, some deficiencies in the data provided by the UN are mentioned: the economic data is not significant enough, it is they should incorporate parameters related to the institutional development of nations and national data should be replaced by data regional

Photo: Fotolia - Carlosgardel

Issues in Developing Country