The term “third world” arose at the stage of active opposition of two systems: capitalist and socialist. The states that remained aloof from direct participation in this struggle began to be called the "third world" or the developing countries.
The states of the "third world" usually include the former colonial and dependent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. These countries have become politically independent, but entangled in networks of economic dependence, tied to a foreign capitalist economy, its industrial, scientific and technical base.
Abnormal economic relations have long ago developed between Western states and most developing countries. These relations were built on nonequivalent trade. Western countries sell their finished industrial products at higher prices, and buy raw materials and energy in third world countries at lower prices. As a result, the debt of developing countries to developed countries is growing rapidly.
The interaction of the former colonial and dependent countries with highly industrialized powers implies their encounter with the challenge of industrial civilization. It is not easy for developing countries to give a worthy answer to this challenge: they have to create a new economic structure, seek optimal forms of statehood, join international relations, and interact with foreign cultural values.
Developing countries can be conditionally divided into several blocks:
- the tropical Africa;
- the Arab countries;
- the Indo-Buddhist-Muslim block;
- the Confucian block;
- Latin America.
The following socio-economic problems are also characteristic to the third world countries:
- high fertility and overpopulation.
- the demographic problem, caused by the population explosion in the second half of the 20th century;
- underdevelopment of the education system;
- low life expectancy;
- high unemployment;
- lack of capital;
- uneven distribution of natural resources.
The integration associations of developing countries play an important role in their macroeconomic development. Cooperation gives them advantages in the use of unevenly distributed natural and other economic resources.
States belonging to the same region, as a rule, are very different from each other in many economic indicators, including natural wealth, labor force, industrial structure, etc. Integration, on the one hand, opens up access to their sources to states that do not have the necessary resources. On the other hand, it allows countries that have resources, but are not able to independently develop them, to benefit from their use.
