Papua New Guinea Population 2023 (Live)

According to current projections, Papua New Guinea’s population, which is currently at 8.95 million people, will continue to grow throughout the rest of the 21st century. By 2050, the population will be 14.2 million people. By 2100, the population will be at 19.78 million people.

Papua New Guinea’s population growth rate from 2019 to 2020 was 1.95%. The country’s fertility rate is 3.59 births per woman, which is relatively high and is far above the population replacement rate of 2.1 births.

Papua New Guinea’s population growth poses a threat to the country’s infrastructure, hospitals, education systems, and economy, which are already challenges for the island nation.

Papua New Guinea Population Growth

The growth rate in Papua New Guinea has been slowing in recent years, but the country still has what is known as a "youth bulge," meaning there is a disproportionately high number of young people not yet old enough to work and help support the rest of the people. The current growth rate sits around 2% annual growth, which would be a more manageable number if there were more immigrants as opposed to new children being born.

Papua New Guinea Population Projections

The population of Papua New Guinea has been gradually slowing or many years and that is expected to continue in the years to come. Current projections believe that the annual population rate will hit a temporary peak in 2020 at 2.03% before declining nearly a full percentage point over the next 30 years. These same predictions say that the population of Papua New Guinea will be 8,755,675 in 2020, 10,486,891 in 2030, 12,224,302 in 2040, and 13,871,403 by 2050.

Papua New Guinea Area and Population Density

Papua New Guinea is found on the eastern half of New Guinea in the southwest Pacific Ocean. It is an extremely geographically diverse part of the world with beautiful coral reefs and beaches, as well as rainforest and mountains. The country covers 178,704 square miles (462,840 square kilometers) of area. Papua New Guinea is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. Using the 2017 population of 8.25 million, the population density of Papua New Guinea is 46 people per square mile (17.8 people per square kilometer), which ranks 167th in the world.

Largest Cities in Papua New Guinea

Urban areas are not at all plentiful in Papua New Guinea, and only 13% of people live in or around a city center. The largest city and capital is Port Moresby, with a population of about 310,000. Modern infrastructure is still relatively new in the area, which has kept the growth fairly slow. The only other city with a population over 100,000 in Papua New Guinea is the city of Lae, which lies along the transport corridor between the Markham River and the highlands highway. Papua New Guinea remains one of the least explored areas of the world and has a large population of uncontacted people, as well as undiscovered flora and fauna.

Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that makes up the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and the offshore islands of Melanesia north of Australia.

Papua New Guinea Demographics

Papua New Guinea is one of the most diverse countries 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 largest 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.

Another 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, including Polynesians, Micronesians, Filipinos, Australians, Europeans and Chinese.

Papua New Guinea Area and Population Density

Papua New Guinea is a very Christian nation, but the population is very spread out in terms of the denominations that they follow. 26% of people in Papua New Guinea are Catholic, 18.4% are Evangelical Lutheran, 12.9% are Seventh-day Adventists, 10.4% are Pentecostal, 10.3% belong to the United Church in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, 5.9% belong to the Evangelical Alliance, 3.2% are Anglican, 2.8% are Baptist, 0.4% belong to the Salvation Army, 0.2% follow the Kwato Church, and 5.1% perform another form of Christianity. This is much more diverse a spread of beliefs within one religion than most countries have. 4.5% of the population either have no religion or are affiliated with one other than Christianity.

While Papua New Guinea is one of the world's fastest growing economies, 30% of the population 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.

Papua New Guinea Population History

People have been known to populate the land now known as Papua New Guinea since roughly 50,000 BC, but any trends that far back are not at all documented. Just before the turn of the 19th century, the land quickly changed hands between Europeans and Australia. The Japanese temporarily occupied the territory during World War II.

In 1954, an aerial survey discovered land occupied by 100,000 people that had never before been documented. Papua New Guinea finally gained full independence in 1975. There was a drought in 1999 that killed over 1,000 people and put more than a million at risk of starvation. Three consecutive tsunamis in 1998 killed 3,000 people.