In 1971 , the United Nations established the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) category to support the world’s most vulnerable and impoverished nations in achieving greater integration into global development and prosperity. While international efforts have been made to assist LDCs in this endeavor, the development gap between these countries and the rest of the world continues to widen. The factors driving LDCs toward sustained development remain unclear. This paper analyzes aggregate data from 1971 to the present, sourced from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI), to assess LDCs’ progress in income, health, and education relative to other income groups and the global average. The findings show minimal improvements in GNI per capita for LDCs, leading to an increasing gap with wealthier countries. However, LDCs have achieved
significant progress in health outcomes and demonstrate similar trends in education indicators. Additionally, using a system GMM model on cross-country panel data from 45 current and 7 former LDCs from 1971 to 2020 , this study identifies manufacturing value-added, gross domestic savings, population growth, international trade, and foreign aid as key determinants of development in LDCs.
