Final answer:
The correct answer is c) less-developed, which refers to countries that are industrially developing and just starting to engage in world trade, typically with lower per capita incomes.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to the United Nations' stages of economic development for classifying countries, c) less-developed countries consist of industrially developing countries just entering world trade with relatively low per capita incomes. These countries are often in the process of industrialization and may have less wealth to distribute among their populations compared to more-developed or high-income nations.
Cold War terminology, although now outdated, referred to economically advanced countries as 'first world', whereas the least-developed countries with high levels of poverty and minimal industrialization were labeled 'third world'. It's important to note that these terms carry a level of ethnocentric bias and the international community now typically uses 'developing' and 'developed' to describe these countries in a less biased manner.
Global classification methods play a crucial role in understanding economic differences among countries and help identify trends in areas including health and medicine. Therefore, careful and inclusive language is essential when discussing global economic development and inequality.