Average BMI in Papua New Guinea
Men in Papua New Guinea have an average BMI of 25.4, women 26.0. Both means fall in the WHO overweight band for men and overweight for women. That puts Papua New Guinea 113th of 186 countries in our data, ranked from highest BMI to lowest.
Key numbers
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Estimated share in each WHO category
Columns may not sum to 100 because of rounding. Real BMI distributions have a longer right tail than a normal curve, so the obese share here is probably a few points low.
Papua New Guinea among its neighbours
What a given BMI means in Papua New Guinea
Read it as: a man with BMI 30 in Papua New Guinea has a higher BMI than 80% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in Papua New Guinea is 5.5. About two thirds of men have a BMI between 19.9 and 30.9; for women the middle two thirds run from 19.8 to 32.2. Compared with the global mean, men here are 0.9 points higher and women 1.2 points higher.
BMI does not distinguish muscle from fat, and the WHO bands were set on European populations. For South and East Asian populations the same BMI carries more health risk, which is why several countries there use 23 and 27.5 as their own cut-offs.
Questions
- What is the average BMI in Papua New Guinea?
- 25.4 for men and 26.0 for women, with standard deviations of 5.5 and 6.2. Averaged across the sexes that is 25.7, against a global figure of 24.6.
- What share of adults in Papua New Guinea are overweight or obese?
- Our estimate from the mean and SD: 53% of men have a BMI of 25 or more, and 20% are at 30 or more. For women it is 56% and 26%. These assume a normal curve, so the true obesity shares are likely a few points higher.
- Is a BMI of 25 high in Papua New Guinea?
- A BMI of 25 is the WHO line between healthy weight and overweight. In Papua New Guinea it is higher than about 47% of men and 44% of women. For men here that is roughly the median.
- How does Papua New Guinea compare with Austria?
- Men in Austria average 26.7 against 25.4 in Papua New Guinea; women 24.7 against 26.0. Austria ranks 112th, Papua New Guinea 113th.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Papua New Guinea is one of them, so the SD, the category shares and the percentiles above use the global spread rather than one measured here.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Lancet 2017, age-standardised mean BMI for 2016. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.
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