Developed vs. Developing Countries: Full List

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No single official list settles which country is the most developed; the answer depends on the yardstick. This ranking orders 217 economies by GDP per capita and tags each with its World Bank income group. On that basis Monaco comes first at $288,002 per person, ahead of Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. On the UN’s Human Development Index, which adds health and education to income, Switzerland and Norway have recently held the top two places. Whether a country is “developed” in the formal sense is a separate question, answered by the UN and the IMF in their own classifications.

These three measures (output per person, income group and official development status) usually agree for the obvious cases, such as the United States, Germany or Japan. They disagree for China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Poland and Turkey, among others.

How This Ranking Is Ordered

Both measures come from the World Bank. The rank and the dollar figure are GDP per capita: gross domestic product divided by population, converted to U.S. dollars at market exchange rates. The income group follows the World Bank’s annual classification, which uses gross national income (GNI) per capita calculated with the Atlas method and sorts economies into four groups:

• High income
• Upper middle income
• Lower middle income
• Low income

The World Bank resets the dollar thresholds for each group every year on July 1 and applies them for its fiscal year. A country can therefore change groups because of a recession, a currency move or population revisions, even if very little changes on the ground.

Why the rank and the income group do not always line up

GDP counts what is produced inside a country’s borders. GNI adds income residents earn from abroad and subtracts income that flows out to foreign owners and investors. The Atlas method also smooths exchange rates by averaging them over three years and adjusting for inflation differences, so a sudden currency crash or spike feeds into GNI more slowly than into a single year’s GDP in dollars.

Turkiye ranks 81st with GDP per capita of $18,599, yet it is classified upper middle income. American Samoa, Chile and the Russian Federation all rank below it and are classified high income. Further down, Nauru ranks 90th at $14,640 but is also high income, while the economies around it are upper middle income. The rank answers “how much output per person, in dollars, last year.” The income group answers “which World Bank lending and statistical bracket does this economy fall into.”

What the regions mean

The regions are the World Bank’s analytical groupings, not strict geography. Malta, for example, falls under “Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan,” and the Faroe Islands and Greenland under “Europe & Central Asia.” Use a region to compare peers within World Bank reports, not as a statement about where a country sits on a map.

Choosing between entries

Which entry counts as more developed depends on the question you are asking:

• Spending power and wages: GDP per capita at market exchange rates shows what a country’s output is worth in dollars. That matters for trade, imported goods and foreign investors. It overstates or understates local living costs.
• Living standards: GDP or GNI per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), or the HDI, gives a better comparison of what people can actually afford and how long and how well they live.
• Formal status: for questions about trade rules, aid eligibility or which group a country belongs to in UN or IMF statistics, check that organization’s own list. A ranking position does not answer these questions.
• Investing: stock market index providers maintain their own developed, emerging and frontier lists, which drive what an “emerging markets” fund actually holds (covered below).

Developed vs. Developing: Three Official Systems

Even the major international institutions do not share one definition of a developed country. Each built its classification for a different job.

The UN’s 2023 classification counted 36 developed economies, all in North America, Europe or what it calls developed Asia and Pacific (Japan, Australia and New Zealand). Its 2024 edition listed 125 developing economies across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The “economies in transition” group covers former Soviet and Southeast European economies that do not fit either side. Russia is its best-known member.

The IMF’s advanced economy group is wider in Asia than the UN’s developed group. It includes South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR. The UN has kept these economies in its developing groupings. The World Bank, for its part, said in 2016 that it would stop using the developed/developing split in its World Development Indicators because the binary had lost much of its meaning. It now relies on income groups alone.

This is why countries such as Mexico, Greece and Turkey can be called developed in one source and developing in another.

What Makes a Country Developed

In everyday use, a developed country has a high income per person, a mature industrial and service economy, a high standard of living and widespread modern infrastructure. These traits feed each other. Better technology raises output, higher output funds schools and hospitals, and healthier, better-educated workers produce more.

Developed countries also tend to share demographic and financial patterns:

• Stable, low birth and death rates. Good medical care keeps infant mortality low, so families have less reason to have many children in the expectation that some will not survive.
• Higher participation of women in paid work. It often comes with smaller families and later childbearing.
• Heavy use of the world’s resources. More people drive, fly and heat or cool their homes with electricity and gas than in poorer countries, where many households lack access to energy-intensive technology.
• Greater capacity to borrow. Advanced economies can usually raise large amounts of debt in their own currencies at moderate cost, which developing economies often cannot.

None of these traits works as a strict test. The United States, for example, scores high on income and HDI. It is also regularly cited for a higher poverty rate than other rich industrialized nations, aging infrastructure and the lack of universal health coverage.

What Makes a Country Developing

A country is usually described as developing when it falls short on several of those criteria: lower income per person, a smaller industrial base, lower living standards and limited access to modern technology. In the poorest cases this shows up as shortages of jobs, food, clean drinking water, schooling, health care and housing.

“Developing” covers a very wide range. China, with the world’s second-largest economy, and a low-income country with a small fraction of China’s income per person both fall under it in UN terms. For the bottom of that range, the UN keeps a narrower category, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The UN Committee for Development Policy reviews it every three years against three criteria: income per person, human assets (health and education) and economic vulnerability. Countries can graduate out of LDC status when they pass the thresholds at consecutive reviews, and graduation phases out some of the trade preferences and concessional support attached to the label.

The older “first, second and third world” vocabulary overlaps with these categories but comes from Cold War alignment rather than economics, a history covered in third world countries and how the term is used today.

Why Microstates and Financial Centers Top the List

Of the top 10, only Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore and Norway have populations above 5 million. The rest are microstates or small territories: Monaco (38,000 people), Liechtenstein (41,000), Luxembourg (687,000), Bermuda (65,000), the Cayman Islands (76,000) and Iceland (392,000). Several structural effects push their GDP per capita far above what residents’ living standards alone would produce.

Cross-border workers. GDP counts output produced inside the borders. Population counts only residents. Luxembourg, Monaco and Liechtenstein all draw large numbers of daily commuters from neighboring countries. Their work adds to GDP, but they are not in the denominator, which inflates output per resident.

Financial and corporate centers. Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore host large insurance, fund management, banking and holding company sectors. High-value financial activity booked locally adds a great deal of GDP relative to population.

Multinational accounting. Ireland is the clearest case. Its GDP per capita on this list is $131,593, fifth overall, partly because many multinational companies record intellectual property and profits there. Much of that income is paid out to foreign owners. Ireland’s Central Statistics Office created an adjusted measure, modified GNI (GNI*), in 2017 precisely because headline GDP had stopped describing the domestic economy well.

Resource wealth. Norway (10th, $94,594) and Qatar (18th, $72,525) earn large revenues from oil and gas relative to their populations. Norway saves much of its petroleum income in a sovereign wealth fund. Qatar’s resident population, about 3.0 million, is largely made up of foreign workers, which affects how per-capita figures translate into the incomes of typical residents.

Specialized economies. Macao SAR (14th) draws much of its output from gaming and tourism.

The practical consequence: for a question like “which large economy has the highest living standards,” the top 10 entries mostly do not answer it. Among economies with more than 100 million people, the United States ranks highest, 11th at $90,027 per person.

GDP and GDP Per Capita Explained

Gross domestic product is the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a given period: consumption, investment, government spending and net exports.

Total GDP ranks the largest economies in the world by GDP, but size says little about how well off the average person is, because populations vary enormously. China has about 1.4 billion people and Ireland about 5 million, so China’s total GDP is naturally far larger.

GDP per capita corrects for population:

GDP per capita = GDP ÷ Population

Hypothetical example: an economy with GDP of $500 billion and 10 million residents has GDP per capita of $50,000. A second economy with GDP of $2 trillion and 200 million residents has GDP per capita of $10,000. The second economy is four times larger in total but produces one-fifth as much per person.

On that per-person basis the China and Ireland comparison flips. China is about 280 times more populous, yet Ireland’s GDP per capita is roughly an order of magnitude higher on this list ($131,593 against $13,862).

What GDP per capita leaves out

• Distribution. It is an average. Two countries with the same figure can have very different shares of national income going to the typical household.
• Price levels. Figures at market exchange rates do not account for local costs. A dollar of output buys more housing, food and services in a low-cost country, which PPP-based measures try to capture.
• Exchange rate swings. Because the figures are converted to dollars, a currency that weakens against the dollar lowers a country’s GDP per capita in this ranking even if domestic output is unchanged.
• Non-market and quality factors. Health, education, leisure, pollution and safety are not counted directly.

The Human Development Index

The UN Development Programme created the Human Development Index to judge development by people’s capabilities rather than by income alone. It combines three dimensions into a score between 0 and 1:

1. A long and healthy life: life expectancy at birth. The index scales this so that 20 years equals 0 and 85 years equals 1.
2. Knowledge: two schooling measures, mean years of schooling for adults and expected years of schooling for a child entering school.
3. A decent standard of living: GNI per capita at purchasing power parity, measured on a logarithmic scale so that each extra dollar counts for less as income rises.

The three dimension indexes are combined with a geometric mean. A very poor score in one dimension therefore pulls the total down more than a simple average would.

The UNDP sorts countries into tiers: very high human development (0.800 and above), high (0.700 to 0.799), medium (0.550 to 0.699) and low (below 0.550). There is no official HDI cutoff for developed status, but countries on the UN’s developed list generally score 0.8 or higher.

What the HDI is useful for

The HDI is most revealing when income and outcomes diverge. If two countries have similar GNI per capita but very different HDI scores, the gap points to differences in health systems, schooling or other policy choices rather than in raw economic capacity.

Argentina is an example among large economies. Its GDP per capita on this list is $14,898, upper middle income, yet its HDI of 0.849 puts it in the very high tier. That is above Russia (0.821), Thailand (0.803) and China (0.788). The index also has limits. It does not adjust for inequality in its headline form, and it says nothing about political freedoms, environmental quality or economic stability.

Which Is the Most Developed Country in the World?

Each measure gives a defensible answer:

• Highest GDP per capita: Monaco ($288,002), followed by Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Bermuda and Ireland.
• Highest HDI: in the UNDP’s 2023/2024 Human Development Report, Switzerland ranked first at 0.967 and Norway second at 0.966. Both also sit in the top 10 of this ranking, 6th and 10th.
• Largest developed economy: the United States, with the biggest total GDP in the world and the highest GDP per capita of any country with more than 100 million people.

For a top-10 or top-30 list of “most developed countries” in the everyday sense, the most defensible approach is to start from the UN or IMF developed and advanced lists and then order by HDI. A pure GDP-per-capita order, like the one above, puts tax havens and territories alongside nations. Switzerland and Norway come out near the top on every measure.

Is It Developed? Country-by-Country Answers

Each profile below covers a country where the measures disagree, or where the status question comes up often. Ranks and GDP per capita follow this ranking. HDI scores come from the UNDP’s 2023/2024 report, and life expectancy and infant mortality are recent World Bank figures.

United States

Yes, developed by every major classification. The U.S. is high income, ranked 11th at $90,027 per person, has the world’s largest total GDP and is the largest trading nation when imports and exports are combined. Its HDI is 0.927. Life expectancy at birth (about 79 years) and infant mortality (about six deaths per 1,000 live births) are weaker than in most other rich countries. Critics point to these figures, along with poverty and infrastructure gaps, as traits more often associated with developing economies.

China

No, China is classified as developing. The UN counts it among developing economies, and the IMF places it among emerging market and developing economies. On this list it is upper middle income, 93rd at $13,862 per person, despite having the second-largest economy in the world. China designates itself as a developing country in the World Trade Organization. Its HDI of 0.788 falls in the high tier, not the very high one. Life expectancy is about 78 years and infant mortality about five per 1,000. Agriculture remains a larger share of output than in the advanced economies, although that share has been falling for decades.

India

No, India is a developing country. It is the world’s fifth-largest economy by total GDP. Its very large population, more than 1.4 billion people, keeps output per person low: about $2,485 in 2023 World Bank data, which places it in the lower middle income group. India’s HDI is 0.644, in the medium tier, and infant mortality is about 25 deaths per 1,000 live births. India is often described as a newly industrialized economy and one of the faster-growing large economies. Its strengths include IT services, business process outsourcing and software exports, supported by a large English-speaking, educated workforce. Poverty and gaps in water and sanitation remain widespread.

Russia

Not developed in the UN or IMF sense, though high income on this list. The UN classifies Russia as an economy in transition, a group created for post-Soviet economies. The IMF treats it as an emerging market. Yet the World Bank places it in the high income group: 84th here, at $17,547 per person. Russia was a superpower alongside the United States during the Cold War, and its economy collapsed after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Natural resource exports, mainly oil and gas, drive much of its economy, and sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine have weighed on it. Its HDI of 0.821 is in the very high tier, while life expectancy of about 73 years is low for a high-income economy.

Japan

Yes, developed. Japan is on the UN developed list and the IMF advanced list, and it is a G7 member. It ranks 48th here at $35,951 per person, below several smaller European economies. Part of the reason is that dollar-based figures move with exchange rates. Japan’s HDI is 0.920. Life expectancy is about 84 years, among the longest in the world, and infant mortality is about two per 1,000. The economy is heavily service-based, with about 1% of workers in agriculture, and it depends on imported food and energy.

Australia

Yes, developed. Australia is one of the UN’s developed Asia and Pacific economies. It is high income, 19th at $65,130 per person, and sits in the World Bank’s East Asia & Pacific region. Its HDI of 0.946 is among the highest of any large economy. Life expectancy is about 83.6 years and infant mortality about three per 1,000. Mining and energy exports sit alongside a large service sector.

France

Yes, developed. France is a G7 member, on both the UN developed and IMF advanced lists, and high income at 34th ($48,986). It has a diverse economy spanning tourism, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. The state retains a strong presence in power, public transport and defense. HDI is 0.910, life expectancy about 83 years and infant mortality about three per 1,000.

Italy

Yes, developed. Italy is a G7 member and ranks 37th here at $43,309 per person. It has a strong manufacturing base known for luxury goods, vehicles, machinery and food products. Roughly three-quarters of workers are in services and about 2% in agriculture, a typical developed-economy profile. Life expectancy is about 84 years and HDI is 0.906.

Spain

Yes, developed. Spain is in the EU and on both the UN and IMF developed and advanced lists. It ranks 43rd here at $38,627 per person. After the transition to democracy that began in 1975, Spain grew into the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy, with manufacturing, financial services, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles and tourism. Life expectancy is about 84 years, adult literacy is about 99% and HDI is 0.911.

Singapore

It depends on the source. The IMF classifies Singapore as an advanced economy, and the World Bank places it in the high income group, 8th on this list at $98,814 per person. Its HDI of 0.949 is higher than that of most European countries. The UN, however, has kept Singapore within its developing Asia grouping. For practical purposes such as income, health and infrastructure, Singapore matches or exceeds most developed countries. The “developing” label surfaces mainly in UN statistical tables.

Hong Kong

Advanced and high income, but not a separate country on UN developed lists. Hong Kong SAR is a special administrative region of China. The IMF counts it among advanced economies, and the World Bank classifies it as high income, 28th at $56,983 per person. As a global financial center with a services-dominated economy, it has the income and infrastructure profile of a developed economy. Its formal status is tied to China, which the UN classifies as developing.

Qatar

High income, but not classified as developed. Qatar ranks 18th at $72,525 per person and is high income. The UN counts it as a developing economy, and the IMF groups it with emerging and developing economies. Qatar’s wealth rests heavily on natural gas and oil. Its economy is far less diversified than those on the developed lists, and much of its resident population is foreign workers.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Both are high income, and both are classified by the UN as developing. Saudi Arabia ranks 50th at $34,537 per person. It is the largest economy in the Middle East and one of the world’s largest oil exporters. Oil supplies the large majority of government revenue, and that lack of diversification is a key reason it is not grouped with developed economies. Human rights organizations have also criticized its treatment of dissidents.

The UAE ranks 32nd at $50,274 and has an HDI of 0.937. It has diversified further away from oil than Saudi Arabia, with services and industry each making up roughly half of output. It remains in the developing category in UN terms.

Poland

Developed by some measures, emerging by others. Poland was a Soviet satellite state until 1989 and has since become a market economy and an EU member. The UN counts EU members among developed economies, and the World Bank places Poland in the high income group, 60th at $28,420 per person. The IMF still classifies Poland as an emerging market economy, and stock index providers split on it (see the investor section below). Poland’s HDI is 0.881, and it offers public health care and tuition-free higher education at public universities.

South Korea

Advanced by most measures, with one notable exception. South Korea is high income (47th, $36,227) and an IMF advanced economy. Its HDI is 0.929, and life expectancy is about 83 years. After decades of rapid, export-led growth it became an industrial and technology economy built on electronics, telecommunications, cars, chemicals, shipbuilding and steel. It joined the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee in 2010, becoming the first former aid recipient to join the main donors’ group. In 2021 UNCTAD moved it to its developed-country group. The UN’s economic classification, however, has kept it among developing Asian economies. Its main challenges are a rapidly aging population and dependence on exports.

Argentina

Developing, despite strong human development scores. Argentina is upper middle income, 86th at $14,898 per person, and the UN counts it as developing. In the early 20th century it was among the world’s wealthier countries per person. Its later history of debt crises, defaults and high inflation pulled it well behind the advanced economies. Its HDI of 0.849 is in the very high tier, and life expectancy is about 76 years. Services make up the largest part of the economy, followed by industry and agriculture, with food processing, vehicles and consumer goods among its main industries.

Thailand

Developing, upper middle income. Thailand is the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia, with GDP per capita of about $7,171 in 2023 World Bank data. Over roughly four decades it moved from low income to upper middle income. Exports of electronics, vehicles and parts, agricultural goods and processed foods equal around two-thirds of GDP. Its HDI of 0.803 is just inside the very high tier, while infant mortality, at about eight per 1,000, is well above developed-country levels.

Turkey (Turkiye)

Usually classified as developing, though it straddles the line. Turkey is a founding member of the OECD and has at times been grouped with developed economies. Today most bodies, and Turkey itself, treat it as developing, and the UN counts it as a developing economy. On this list it ranks 81st at $18,599 per person but is upper middle income, the clearest case of rank and income group diverging. Its HDI is 0.855 and life expectancy about 77 years. Infant mortality of about nine per 1,000 is lower than in many developing countries but well above the developed average.

Mexico

Developing, though ahead of many peers. Mexico is upper middle income (92nd, $13,889) and has been an OECD member since 1994. Agriculture is a small share of its economy, under 4%, while industry and services dominate, helped by deep trade integration with the United States and Canada. Its HDI of 0.781, life expectancy of about 75 years and infant mortality of about 11 per 1,000 trail its North American neighbors. Poverty and uneven access to quality health care and clean water persist.

Brazil

Developing. Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America but is upper middle income, 101st at $10,713 per person. Its HDI is 0.760, and life expectancy is about 73 years, close to the global average. Limited access to health care in rural areas, poor housing in many urban districts, and gaps in clean water and sanitation are key reasons it is grouped with developing economies.

Indonesia

Developing. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Its GDP per capita is just under $5,000, and the World Bank currently places it in the upper middle income group. Its HDI is 0.713. Exports include mineral fuels, palm and other vegetable oils, rubber and machinery. Millions of Indonesians still lack safe water and adequate sanitation, and infant mortality is about 17 per 1,000.

Ireland

Yes, developed, but its GDP per capita overstates it. Ireland is on the UN developed and IMF advanced lists, and its HDI of 0.950 is among the world’s highest. Its fifth-place ranking at $131,593 per person reflects multinational profits booked in the country, the distortion modified GNI was designed to remove. In 2021 Ireland signed on to the OECD-led international agreement on a minimum corporate tax rate, after years in which its low rate had drawn large multinational operations.

Developed vs. Emerging Markets for Investors

Investors meet a fourth classification system, often without realizing it. Index providers such as MSCI, FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones Indices sort stock markets into developed, emerging and frontier groups. These lists decide which countries an “emerging markets” or “developed ex-U.S.” fund holds, so a status change can trigger large index-driven buying or selling.

Market classifications weigh economic size and income, but they focus on how easy it is for foreign investors to trade. The criteria include market size and liquidity, openness to foreign ownership, ease of moving capital in and out, settlement and custody standards, and the stability of the regulatory framework. These criteria explain some results that look odd on an income ranking:

• South Korea is high income and an IMF advanced economy. FTSE Russell treats it as a developed market, while MSCI still classifies it as emerging, citing market access issues such as currency convertibility.
• Poland is developed in FTSE Russell’s indexes but emerging in MSCI’s.
• High-income Gulf economies such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear in emerging market indexes.
• Many high-income microstates and territories near the top of this list, such as Monaco, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, have no standalone index category at all.

If you hold an emerging-markets fund, its country weights come from the index provider’s list, not from any income or development ranking. Check the fund’s index methodology before assuming which countries you own.

Who Gets Development Aid and Trade Preferences

Development status matters most where it unlocks money or trade concessions, which is one reason so many competing definitions exist. Each institution sets its own eligibility rules.

World Trade Organization. The WTO has no official definition of a developing country. Members announce for themselves whether they are developed or developing, and other members can challenge a claim to particular benefits. Developing status can give access to “special and differential treatment,” such as longer transition periods to implement agreements and more flexible commitments. This self-designation is why China, South Korea and Singapore have all, at various times, claimed developing status in WTO settings despite high or rising incomes.

Official development assistance. The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee keeps a list of countries eligible to receive official development assistance. It is built from the World Bank income groups and the UN’s LDC list. Countries that stay above the high-income threshold for three consecutive years are removed at the next review. A move into the high-income group therefore eventually ends a country’s eligibility for this type of aid.

World Bank lending. Income group, together with creditworthiness, affects which World Bank financing a country can use. The poorest countries qualify for grants and highly concessional loans from the International Development Association, while middle-income countries borrow on terms closer to market rates.

Which Are the Fastest Developing Countries?

The usual measure of how fast an economy is developing is real GDP growth, the annual percentage change in inflation-adjusted GDP:

Real GDP growth (%) = (Real GDP this year ÷ Real GDP last year − 1) × 100

Hypothetical example: if real GDP rises from $100 billion to $105 billion, real growth is 5%. If prices also rose 3%, nominal GDP would have grown by more, but only the 5% reflects higher output.

On this measure, Guyana stood out in IMF figures for 2024, with real GDP growth of 33.9%. The driver was offshore oil production, which began in 2019. Guyana is now high income, ranked 53rd at $32,414 per person, although until recently it was among the poorer economies of South America.

Fast growth and development are not the same thing. A jump in oil output can lift GDP per capita within a few years. Health, schooling, institutions and infrastructure, which the HDI and the UN’s classifications capture, change far more slowly. Over longer periods, large Asian economies such as China and India have been the main examples of sustained high growth. India is now frequently described as one of the fastest-growing major economies.

What Is the Poorest Country in the World?

The answer depends on whether poverty means a small economy or low income per person, and these are often confused. The economy with the lowest total GDP in World Bank data is Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation of about 11,000 people. That reflects its tiny size. It does not make Tuvalu the poorest country, since its income per person is far higher than in many larger, poorer countries.

The poorest countries in the sense most people mean are those with the lowest GDP or GNI per capita. They appear at the bottom of this ranking, mostly in the World Bank’s low income group, and most of them are also on the UN’s Least Developed Countries list. For poverty measured by household living standards rather than national averages, the World Bank’s extreme poverty line and the UNDP’s Multidimensional Poverty Index are the standard references.

FAQs

The Bottom Line

Anyone comparing countries, from students to investors, should pick the measure that fits the question before trusting a rank. GDP per capita favors microstates and financial centers, the HDI better reflects living standards, and formal developed status comes from UN or IMF lists. Investors in emerging-markets funds should check the index provider's own country list, since it sets what the fund actually holds.