Developed country
country with a developed industry and infrastructure
A developed country, or advanced country, is a country that has a high quality of life, developed economy, and advanced technological infrastructure relative to other less industrialized nations. Most commonly, the criteria for evaluating the degree of economic development are: gross domestic product (GDP), gross national income (GNI), per capita income, level of industrialization, amount of widespread infrastructure and general standard of living. Which criteria are to be used and which countries can be classified as being developed are subjects of debate. Different definitions of developed countries are provided by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the World Bank, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Paris Club and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), while the Human Development Index is used to rank countries on the composite basis of life expectancy, education, and income per capita.
Developed countries have generally more advanced post-industrial economies, meaning the tertiary sector provides more wealth than the secondary sector. They are contrasted with developing countries, which are in the process of industrialisation or are pre-industrial and almost entirely agrarian, some of which might fall into the category of least developed countries. As of 2023, advanced economies constitute 57.3% of global GDP based on nominal value and 41.1% of global GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) according to the IMF.
Definition and criteria
Economic criteria have tended to dominate discussions. One such criterion is the income per capita; countries with the high gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would thus be described as developed countries. Another economic criterion is industrialisation; countries in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate would thus be described as developed. More recently, another measure, the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines an economic measure, national income, with other measures, indices for life expectancy and education has become prominent.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Developed country” as country with a developed industry and infrastructure. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as country with a developed industry and infrastructure. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132453. VIAF identifies the subject as 240780165. The Library of Congress control number is sh2001000124. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Developed country” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.