Where a boundary is drawn in a classification determines which countries get aid.

Evidence

The semantics are the criteria are for drawing the boundary lines between categories. That determines what real-life empirical cases fall into the different categories. These categories often have a life of their own and inform major policy decisions. The World Bank categories are not infrequently used to decide which countries are eligible for development aid. So these categorization decisions are fraught with potentially important policy consequences in terms of decisions made by national governments and international organizations. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 721

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the recurring theme that classification systems are infrastructures with political consequences (e.g., AI training-data taxonomy work).
• SEED: Angle: how a single threshold revision in the World Bank’s income bands silently reclassifies dozens of countries and reallocates development finance.