I'm curious what the criteria is for classifying China as a developing country. Last I checked, they had lower levels of extreme poverty than the United States.
Once upon a time, the gaps between the well-off countries and the other was large and coherent. It didn't matter very much which requirement you used to separate the two set or where you put the threshold, because the results were more or less the same anyway.
The set of countries whose inhabitants' lifespan was high and growing was the same as the set whose inhabitants earned well, the set whose inhabitants had many years of schooling, the set whose inhabitants were mostly able to locate Italy on a world map, and so on.
China's moving up and isn't simple the classify any more. If you use e.g. average income as the test, then it really matters where you put the limit, because China's no longer really poor but not yet really rich. And you know that, so your choice of where to put the threshold is or may be influenced by what result you want for China.
And interestingly, the US and a couple of other countries are also not simple. What do you call a country whose inhabitants have a long but shrinking lifespan, for example? Or one whose health/education/income statistics are bimodal or more? That is, there are several quite different groups so it's difficult to a single average income or other index, but the old definition of developing country assumes one index per country.
Yes, serious question and thanks for the response. Is there some explicitly listed criteria for what makes a country 'developing' in the Universal Postal Union agreements?
«In 2010, the United States was a net sender because it was mailing goods to other countries. That year, the United States Postal Service made a $275 million surplus on international mail. In addition, the UPU system was only available to state-run postal services. Low terminal dues gave the United States Postal Service an advantage over private postal services such as DHL and FedEx. To protect its profits on sending international mail, the United States voted with the developing countries to keep terminal dues low. […] However, the low terminal dues backfired on the United States due to shifts in mail flows. With the growth of e-commerce, the United States began to import more goods through the mail. In 2015, the United States Postal Service made a net deficit on international mail for the first time. The deficits increased to $80 million in 2017. The UPU established a new remuneration system in 2016, a move that the United States Department of State said would "dramatically improv[e] USPS's cost coverage […]»
The fee structure was changed only one year after the USPS stopped profiting. As I see it, "developing" has little to do with the UPU fee system.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 14.2 ms ] threadI'm curious what the criteria is for classifying China as a developing country. Last I checked, they had lower levels of extreme poverty than the United States.
Once upon a time, the gaps between the well-off countries and the other was large and coherent. It didn't matter very much which requirement you used to separate the two set or where you put the threshold, because the results were more or less the same anyway.
The set of countries whose inhabitants' lifespan was high and growing was the same as the set whose inhabitants earned well, the set whose inhabitants had many years of schooling, the set whose inhabitants were mostly able to locate Italy on a world map, and so on.
China's moving up and isn't simple the classify any more. If you use e.g. average income as the test, then it really matters where you put the limit, because China's no longer really poor but not yet really rich. And you know that, so your choice of where to put the threshold is or may be influenced by what result you want for China.
And interestingly, the US and a couple of other countries are also not simple. What do you call a country whose inhabitants have a long but shrinking lifespan, for example? Or one whose health/education/income statistics are bimodal or more? That is, there are several quite different groups so it's difficult to a single average income or other index, but the old definition of developing country assumes one index per country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Termina... will interest you. I quote the part that is perhaps most intersting to you:
«In 2010, the United States was a net sender because it was mailing goods to other countries. That year, the United States Postal Service made a $275 million surplus on international mail. In addition, the UPU system was only available to state-run postal services. Low terminal dues gave the United States Postal Service an advantage over private postal services such as DHL and FedEx. To protect its profits on sending international mail, the United States voted with the developing countries to keep terminal dues low. […] However, the low terminal dues backfired on the United States due to shifts in mail flows. With the growth of e-commerce, the United States began to import more goods through the mail. In 2015, the United States Postal Service made a net deficit on international mail for the first time. The deficits increased to $80 million in 2017. The UPU established a new remuneration system in 2016, a move that the United States Department of State said would "dramatically improv[e] USPS's cost coverage […]»
The fee structure was changed only one year after the USPS stopped profiting. As I see it, "developing" has little to do with the UPU fee system.