High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO (which along with its allies represented the First World), or communism and the Soviet Union (which along with its allies represented the Second World). This definition provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the earth into three groups based on social, political, and economic divisions. Due to many of the 3rd and 2nd world countries being extremely poor, it became a stereotype such that people commonly refer to undeveloped countries as "third world countries". Third world countries included most of Africa, Latin America, and Asia.