According to Wikipedia,
A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC)) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy, and advanced technological infrastructure relative to other less industrialized nations.
Is there any country that jumped from developing to developed status during the past 75 years after WW2 except the Asian Tigers + Japan?
Although this isn't a perfect list, one can use entry into Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a proxy for development status. Wikipedia has a dated list of entry
| Country | Date of Entry into OECD |
|---|---|
| Costa Rica | 2021 |
| Colombia | 2020 |
| Lithuania | 2018 |
| Latvia | 2016 |
| Estonia | 2010 |
| Israel | 2010 |
| Slovenia | 2010 |
| Chile | 2010 |
| Slovakia | 2000 |
| South Korea | 1996 |
| Hungary | 1996 |
| Poland | 1996 |
| Czech Republic | 1995 |
| Mexico | 1994 |
| New Zealand | 1973 |
| Australia | 1971 |
| Finland | 1969 |
| Japan | 1964 |
| Italy | 1962 |
Many countries are listed as joining in 1961, but this is simply the date of the founding of the OECD (note the US and UK as joining then, when presumably they had been developed for significantly earlier than that)
Going through this list manually, it seems that some of these entries, like Australia might be administrative, rather than associated with development.
Using this information, I might suggest a subset, namely those that have entered past 1995. This includes primarily former soviet countries recovering from the cold war, Israel, and South/Central American countries.
To this list I might add Portugal, which, although obviously developed today, struggled with literacy and GDP until the early 1950s. (Mostly expenditure from colonial struggles, problems with the obsolete corporatist economic model)
According to the OECD or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, there are several countries that have recently become developed. Lithuania has been considered developed since 2018, Latvia since 2016, Estonia since 2010, Slovenia since 2010, Czech Republic since 1995, & Slovakia since 2000. These nations, according to the OECD and their own terms, these are countries that have become 'advanced economies' and have reached the kind of status necessary in order to be considered developed. The United Nations has different standards saying you are developed if you have a HDI or human development index over 0.8 so they considered Lithuania to be developed since 2005, Latvia since 2005, Estonia since 2003, Czech Republic since 2001, Slovakia since 2006, Portugal since 2005, Hungary since 2005, Costa Rica since 2019, Serbia since 2019, Poland since 2003, Argentina since 2006, Liechtenstein since 2000, and Cyprus since 2001.
If we use income as a proxy for "developed, the World Bank lists some high-income economies with their date of becoming developed. The list appears to have started in 1987, so there's a substantial period of time after World War 2 missed. On the other hand, there are several countries that became listed after 1987. Some examples are:
See the list for more. If you are also interested in non-countries, the section also gives some examples:
