Oceania > Papua New Guinea > Papua New Guinea People Profile

Papua New Guinea: Papua New Guinea People Profile

2017/06/25

Papua New Guinea has an estimated people

Papua New Guinea has an estimated people of 7.4 million, which compares to the 2000 census people of 5.19 million. Papua New Guinea is one of the least densely populated nations in the world with 15 people per square kilometer (35/sq mi), which ranks 201st.

The major city and capital is Port Moresby, with a people of about 310,000. Only 18% of the people in Papua New Guinea lives in an urban area. Papua New Guinea remains one of the least explored areas of the world.

Papua New Guinea Demographics

Papua New Guinea is one of the majority diverse nations in the world with 848 different languages spoken (12% of the world's languages), of which 12 have no living speakers remaining. Most languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. There are hundreds of ethnic groups indigenous to Papua New Guinea, although the major is the Papuans, whose ancestors arrived in the area tens of thousands of years ago. Some remote Papuan tribes still have very little contact with the outside world.

An extra large ethnic group is the Austronesians, whose ancestors arrived in the region less than 4,000 years ago. Today, people from around the world call Papua New Guinea home, inclunding Polynesians, Micronesians, Filipinos, Australians, Europeans and Chinese.

While Papua New Guinea is one of the world's fastest growing economies, 30% of the people still lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 USD per day. Most people in Papua New Guinea still live on subsistence-based agriculture. The country has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the Pacific and meets the criteria for a generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic. The leading cause of death is malaria, which affected about 1.7 million people in 2003 alone.