The late Hans Rosling had a good update to the old conceptions of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World. His take was to classify based on income levels on a log scale (well,

The late Hans Rosling had a good update to the old conceptions of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World. His take was to classify based on income levels on a log scale (well, 'log-ish', anyway). Hence the classifications of Level 1 (<$2/day), Level 2 (<$8/day), Level 3 (<$32/day), and Level 4 (>$32/day). This is my preferred way of mentally chunking the world and her people. Mostly because a lot of people are moving on up! https://www.gapminder.org/fw/income-levels/ https://www.gapminder.org/fw/income-levels/ If you've not played around with the stats on gapminder before, go grad a cup of coffee and have some fun! The visuals are good and the interface is one where 4-D data is well presented. In messing around with it, you can see that the world is very much on an upward trajectory, but also has a long way to go. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles