🇵🇬Median age in Papua New Guinea

Key numbers

Papua New Guinea among its neighbours

In plain language

Line up everyone in Papua New Guinea by age. The person in the middle is 22.6. That is the median: it says nothing about how old the oldest are or how many babies were born last year, only where the midpoint falls.

A median of 22.6 is younger than the world's 30.6. For scale, the youngest country here, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4 and the oldest, Japan, 49.4. Life expectancy at birth in Papua New Guinea is 66.1 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 43.5 years ahead of them.

The 2024figure is the UN's medium-variant number; its estimates end in 2023. For a year this close the projection barely differs from an estimate, since everyone counted has already been born.

Questions

What is the median age in Papua New Guinea?

22.6 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Papua New Guinea are younger than 22.6 and half are older. The median is not the average age; it is the midpoint, so a handful of very old people do not move it.

Is Papua New Guinea's population young or old?

Young. Papua New Guinea is 8.0 years below the world median of 30.6, and ranks 139th oldest of the 193 countries here. The youngest country, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4; the oldest, Japan, 49.4.

How does Papua New Guinea compare to Eswatini?

Eswatini has a median age of 22.2, 0.4 years younger than Papua New Guinea. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 55th and 54th youngest.