The official languages of the country all reflect its colonial history. English is the main language of government and commerce. In most everyday contexts the most widely spoken language is Tok Pisin (“Pidgin Language”; also called Melanesian Pidgin or Neo-Melanesian), a creole combining grammatical elements of indigenous languages, some German, and, increasingly, English. Hiri Motu is a simplified trading language originally used by the people who lived around what is now Port Moresby when it came under that name in 1884.

In addition to the official languages, there are more than 800 distinct indigenous languages belonging to two radically different language groups—Austronesian, to which the local languages classified as Melanesian belong, and non-Austronesian, or Papuan. There are some 200 related Austronesian languages. Austronesian speakers generally inhabit the coastal regions and offshore islands, including the Trobriands and Buka. Papuan speakers, who constitute the great majority of the population, live mainly in the interior. The approximately 550 non-Austronesian languages have small speech communities, the largest being the Engan, Melpa, and Kuman speakers in the Highlands, each with more than 100,000 speakers. Amid such a multiplicity of tongues, Tok Pisin serves as an effective lingua franca.

Religion

The majority of Papua New Guinea’s people are at least nominally Christian. More than two-fifths of the population is Protestant; Lutherans make up the largest portion of those, and there are some Anglicans and a growing number of Pentecostals. Approximately another one-fifth are Roman Catholics. Seventh-day Adventism is increasing in popularity, and there are also small numbers of Bahāʾīs and Muslims. Despite the apparent inroads made by introduced religions, much of the population also maintains traditional religious beliefs, and rituals of magic, spells, and sorcery are still widely practiced.

Settlement patterns

The great majority of the country’s population lives in rural areas. Rural settlement patterns are extremely varied. The southern New Guinea plains are only sparsely populated by relatively mobile sago gatherers. The Highlands valleys are densely settled, whether in villages or scattered hamlets. The north coast and northeastern archipelagoes are generally well-populated, despite the hazards of volcanic eruptions, frequent earth tremors, and, rarely, tsunamis. The island of Karkar and the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain are centres of particularly dense population.

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The small urban population lives for the most part in towns whose original location was determined either by access to a good harbour for early colonial planters or, in the interior, by the availability of level land sufficient for an airstrip. Despite the greatly diminished importance of plantations and the relocation of most of the airstrips out of the towns, those origins helped determine the existing urban layout. Port Moresby and Lae, on the Huon Gulf, are the largest cities.

Demographic trends

Papua New Guinea’s rate of population growth tends to be high and life expectancy somewhat low, relative to other countries in the region. About one-third of the population is under 15 years of age. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the birth rate greatly exceeded the world average, while the death rate was moderately high and falling. Rapid population growth has created difficulties in providing basic health and education services. Unemployment and underemployment have exacerbated the problems of poverty, crime, and ethnic tensions, especially in urban areas.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

Agricultural production, most of it from subsistence farming, accounts for about one-third of the country’s gross domestic product. In the archipelagoes of the north and northeast, yams, taro, and bananas are grown as staple foods. These were formerly also the staple foods for Highlanders, who now mostly rely on sweet potatoes known as kau kau. Throughout much of the Highlands, carefully tended gardens dominate the landscape; some are arrayed in checkerboard patterns defined by drainage ditches, and others are circular mounds built on compost to warm and enrich the soil.

In the north the intensive cultivation of fertile soils gives way to swidden (slash-and-burn) cultivation of taro and yams in the forests of the foothills. Those thinly populated areas in turn give way to sago swamps along the courses of the great Ramu and Sepik rivers. In the slightly more elevated areas away from the main rivers there are extensive areas of poor grassland with a high water table that are used for swidden cultivation and hunting.

Almost all commercial crops are exported, although the domestic vegetable market is growing rapidly. After 1975 smallholders increasingly took over the bulk of export crop production, replacing foreign-owned plantations. High-quality Arabica coffee is grown throughout the Highlands, mostly by smallholders; Robusta coffee is grown on the north coast and cacao in the islands. In the colonial era copra was the premier crop in lowland areas, but now only small amounts are produced, together with some rubber in the southern region. The production of plantation crops has suffered from declining terms of trade and was mostly stagnant from the 1980s. The major exception has been the cultivation of oil palm in West New Britain (on previously little-used volcanic soils) and on the eastern mainland, boosted by foreign investment.

Forest exploitation, dominated by foreign-owned logging companies, has been extensive, particularly along the north coast, in parts of the southern region, and on New Britain and New Ireland. At times logs have accounted for one-tenth of the value of national exports, but that proportion fell by about half during the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s and only recovered slowly in the first decade of the 21st century. Forestry was a controversial industry, with logging companies developing connections with the political elite, and it was marked by corrupt practices including improperly issued licenses, mislabeled species, transfer pricing manipulation (the practice of hiding the real value of transactions—e.g., by undervaluing exports—in order to maximize profits), tax avoidance, environmental damage, and lack of reforestation.

Tuna fisheries have great potential and foreign-owned canneries have expanded, but licenses have been sold cheaply and fishing zones monitored poorly.