you seem to really like corruption, you should tell me about that.

Also the developed vs undeveloped country thing

(what classifies a country to be developed or undeveloped?)

LOVE corruption LOVE development it's so so so sexy

okay so development is measured almost solely by two methods; either directly from the level of income per capita, or using the HDI (human development index, which measures education, income and life expectancy and is generally seen as more representative). you might notice that BOTH have a heavy focus on income per capita, so you're probably like 'hey what the fuck what if a country has low income/monetary issues like corruption? do they just not get into the Developed Countries Club?' and the world bank looks at your question and goes 'yes :)' and then you might go 'that's fun and all but what if i believe development should be measured by how happy people are instead of how rich they are? or the quality of education? or literally anything else?' and the world bank goes yawn are you still talking bc they're on money money money by abba lockdown.

so there's four categories for income (low income, lower-middle income, upper-middle income, high income) and three for development (less developed, developing, developed). if ur economy has low income, your less developed. if ur lower or upper middle, you're developing. if you're upper, you're developed.

peachy right? WRONG. because now there's INEQUALITY because 16% of the world's population are considered developed yet they're out here producing 64% of the world's income and 91% (!!!!) of the world's GNP. 'that's a huge disparity between population majority and economic dominance!' you say because you're a very clever economist, to which i agree and shake your hand. the less economic dominance you have, the less sway you have with the world bank and slower your growth is gonna be.

so you're a less developed country right and you're like 'man this blows. i want more economic dominance so i can actually start developing. sure hope there are no Huge Threats stopping me from doing this' but guess what! corruption runs rampant where there is inequality. corruption is a sure-fire way of losing a SHIT TON of economic growth, like billions is lost in tax evasion alone and all of that revenue that was supposed to go into building the economy instead goes into the pockets of assholes with nice suits. and research has also showed that the relationship between development and corruption is TWO-WAY CAUSAL, which basically means that the less developed you are, the more likely you are to be corrupt, but the more corrupt you are, the less developed you'll be - they feed each other. it's a vicious cycle and it's why corruption is so so prevalent and hard to stomp down on. what's more, we dont actually have a proper way of MEASURING corruption because there's obvs so much secrecy between the people doing it. the closest we've come is the CPI (corruption perception index) which is a mix of experts analysing data and also surveys, so like you get a check box going 'is your government corrupt yes or no' and you put little hearts around the yes box.

the worst part about corruption is the general consensus is 'we should stop corruption :/' but that's about it. there's no silver bullet for it. it's very fucking hard to stop once it starts and it's also very quick to grow once it starts, and so far, it's impossible to even accurately MEASURE corruption, let alone get rid of it