The terms First World, Second World, and Third World, can be used to divide the nations of Earth into three broad categories. Third World is a term first coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy on the model of Sieyès’s declaration concerning the Third Estate during the French Revolution: …because at the end this ignored, exploited, scorned Third World like the Third Estate, wants to become something too. The Third World later became a synonym of these nations that aligned themselves with neither the West nor with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Thus, the Non-Aligned Movement was created after the 1955 Bandung Conference.

Today, however, the term is frequently used to denote nations with a low UN Human Development Index (HDI), independent of their political status (meaning that the PRC, Russia and Cuba, all of which were very strongly aligned during the Cold War, are often termed third world). However, there is no objective definition of Third World or Third World country and the use of the term remains common. The term Third World is also disliked as it may imply the false notion that those countries are not a part of the global economic system. Some in academia see it as being out of date, colonialist, othering and inaccurate; its use has continued, however. [1] In general, Third World countries are not as industrialized or technologically advanced as OECD countries, and therefore in academia, the more politically correct term to use is developing nation.