Claim: Albania is a country.

A developing country , also called a less developed country or an underdeveloped country , is a nation or a sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and a low Human Development Index -LRB- HDI -RRB- relative to other countries . There are no universally agreed-upon criteria for what makes a country developing versus developed and which countries fit these two categories , although there are general reference points such as a nation 's GDP per capita compared with other nations . Also , the general term less-developed country should not be confused with the specific least developed country . The term `` developing '' describes a currently observed situation and not a dynamic or expected direction of progress . Since the late 1990s developing countries tended to demonstrate higher growth rates than the developed ones .   There is criticism for using the term developing country . The term implies inferiority of a developing country or undeveloped country compared with a developed country , which many countries dislike . It assumes a desire to develop along the traditional Western model of economic development which a few countries , such as Cuba and Bhutan , choose not to follow . An alternative measurement that has been suggested is that of gross national happiness . Countries on the boundary between developed and developing are often categorized under the term newly industrialized countries .   According to authors such as Walt Whitman Rostow , developing countries are in transition from traditional lifestyles towards the modern lifestyle which began in the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries .   In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators , the World Bank made a decision to no longer distinguish between `` developed '' and `` developing '' countries in the presentation of its data . Nobody has ever agreed on a definition for these terms in the first place .