Papua New Guinea is the world’s most diverse country, both ethnically and linguistically. We examine the rankings based on two academic studies

When Sadiq Khan was voted in as London Mayor, he announced his city ‘the most diverse and fantastic in the world’. This triggered interest from the BBC which ran a podcast examining his claim.

The podcast named the Canadian city of Toronto as the most diverse but in doing so, highlighted a number of methodological problems that also apply when measuring the world’s most diverse country.

World’s most diverse country – methodology

How do we define the world’s most diverse country? We could use the percentage of people born in a different country, but this ignores all second- and third-gen immigrants. Indeed, as the BBC points out itself, Mayor Sadiq Khan wouldn’t count towards diversity by this measure as he was born in the UK.

We could use total nationalities in a country but this also presents problems. The UK might have one person from every country in the world, but that doesn’t mean it is diverse as a meaningful percentage of the overall population.

The two foremost studies in the area use ethnic fractionalisation, an approximation of the probability that two randomly selected individuals from a country will not be from the same ethnic group. This leads to a second set of problems: how do we define an ethnic group?

The first of the two studies (Alesina et al, 2003) uses an objective definition of racial groups, namely Encyclopaedia Britannica. Alas, there are some inconsistencies as Britannica published data for only 124 of 190 countries during the years covered, so Alesina et al completed the list with data from other sources.

The second study (Fearon, 2003) attempts to create the “right list” of groups based on “what people in the country identify as the most socially relevant ethnic groupings.” Fearon’s version covers fewer countries but has been acknowledged by Alesina as “closer to what the theory would want”. Fearon’s list is therefore used for our ranking below.

Insights

Papua New Guinea is the most world’s most diverse country. Interestingly, it is also the world’s most multilingual country. North Korea is the world’s least diverse country and is also the world’s least multilingual country, indicating a tight correlation between the two measures.

Seventeen of the top 20 most diverse countries are African. Clearly, Africa is not a massive homogenous entity as so often thought in the west. (‘Africa is not a country’ has even become a meme.)

The US ranks at 85th, several positions above the UK which ranks at 109th. Australia, which is famously anti-immigration, ranks close to the bottom at 140th. Interestingly, it ranks higher than 12 European countries, all of which appear in the bottom 20 .

World’s most diverse countries – ranked

Rank Country Score 1 Papua New Guinea 1.000 2 Tanzania 0.953 3 Democratic Republic of Congo 0.933 4 Uganda 0.930 5 Liberia 0.899 6 Cameroon 0.887 7 Togo 0.883 8 South Africa 0.880 9 Congo 0.878 10 Madagascar 0.861 11 Gabon 0.857 12 Kenya 0.852 13 Ghana 0.846 14 Malawi 0.829 15 Guinea-Bissau 0.818 16 Somalia 0.812 17 India 0.811 18 Nigeria 0.805 19 Yugoslavia (1943-1992) 0.801 20 Central African Republic 0.791 21 Ivory Coast 0.784 22 Lebanon 0.780 23 Chad 0.772 24 Indonesia 0.766 25 Mozambique 0.765 26 Gambia 0.764 27 Sierra Leone 0.764 28 Ethiopia 0.760 29 Angola 0.756 30 Mali 0.754 31 Afghanistan 0.751 32 Bolivia 0.743 33 United Arab Emirates 0.737 34 Senegal 0.727 35 Zambia 0.726 36 Namibia 0.724 37 USSR (1922-1991) 0.711 38 Sudan (1955-2011) 0.708 39 Kuwait 0.708 40 Burkina Faso 0.704 41 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.681 42 Kyrgyzstan 0.679 43 Nepal 0.677 44 Iran 0.669 45 Guinea 0.669 46 Kazakhstan 0.664 47 Colombia 0.656 48 Ecuador 0.655 49 Eritrea 0.647 50 Trinidad and Tobago 0.647 51 Peru 0.638 52 Niger 0.637 53 Mauritius 0.632 54 Mauritania 0.625 55 Benin 0.622 56 Guyana 0.620 57 Djibouti 0.606 58 Bhutan 0.605 59 Malaysia 0.596 60 Canada 0.596 61 Latvia 0.585 62 Syria 0.581 63 Switzerland 0.575 64 Yugoslavia (1918-1943) 0.575 65 Belgium 0.567 66 Fiji 0.566 67 Saudi Arabia 0.553 68 Bahrain 0.551 69 Iraq 0.549 70 Brazil 0.549 71 Mexico 0.542 72 Macedonia 0.535 73 Pakistan 0.532 74 Israel 0.526 75 Burma 0.522 76 Tajikistan 0.513 77 Estonia 0.511 78 Moldova 0.510 79 Jordan 0.509 80 Panama 0.507 81 Czechoslovakia (1918-1992) 0.505 82 Spain 0.502 83 Chile 0.497 84 Guatemala 0.493 85 United States 0.491 86 Georgia 0.490 87 Uzbekistan 0.485 88 Venezuela 0.483 89 Laos 0.481 90 Morocco 0.479 91 Oman 0.439 92 Thailand 0.431 93 Sri Lanka 0.428 94 Ukraine 0.419 95 Nicaragua 0.402 96 Turkmenistan 0.392 97 Singapore 0.388 98 Dominican Republic 0.387 99 Croatia 0.375 100 Belarus 0.372 101 Zimbabwe 0.366 102 New Zealand 0.363 103 Cyprus 0.359 104 Botswana 0.351 105 Lithuania 0.338 106 Russia 0.333 107 Slovakia 0.332 108 Burundi 0.328 109 United Kingdom 0.324 110 Czech Republic 0.322 111 Algeria 0.320 112 Romania 0.300 113 Turkey 0.299 114 Bulgaria 0.299 115 Swaziland 0.280 116 Taiwan 0.274 117 France 0.272 118 Mongolia 0.272 119 Lesotho 0.255 120 Argentina 0.255 121 Costa Rica 0.238 122 Vietnam 0.233 123 Slovenia 0.231 124 Bangladesh 0.223 125 Uruguay 0.218 126 Cuba 0.213 127 El Salvador 0.198 128 Sweden 0.189 129 Azerbaijan 0.188 130 Hungary 0.186 131 Cambodia 0.186 132 Honduras 0.185 133 Rwanda 0.180 134 Ireland 0.171 135 Jamaica 0.166 136 Egypt 0.164 137 Philippines 0.161 138 China 0.154 139 Libya 0.151 140 Australia 0.149 141 Armenia 0.134 142 Finland 0.132 143 Paraguay 0.132 144 Denmark 0.128 145 Austria 0.126 146 Norway 0.098 147 Albania 0.097 148 Germany 0.095 149 Haiti 0.095 150 Yemen 0.078 151 Netherlands 0.077 152 Greece 0.059 153 Poland 0.047 154 Portugal 0.040 155 Italy 0.040 156 Tunisia 0.039 157 Japan 0.012 158 South Korea 0.004 159 North Korea 0.002

Source: Fearon, 2003

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