Which is the most diverse country in the world?

Which is the most diverse country in the world?

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

When Sadiq Khan was elected mayor of London, he proclaimed his city was “the most diverse and fantastic in the world.” This piqued the interest of the BBC, who released a podcast examining his claim.

The podcast named the Canadian city of Toronto as the most diverse city, but highlighted a number of methodological issues that also apply to measuring the most diverse country in the world.

The most diverse country in the world – methodology

How do we define the most diverse country in the world? We could use the percentage of people born in another country, but that ignores all second and third generation immigrants. Indeed, as the BBC itself points out, Mayor Sadiq Khan would not count towards diversity under this measure because he was born in Britain.

alt="world's most diverse country map">

We could use the totality of nationalities in a country, but that also presents problems. The UK may have one person from every country in the world, but that doesn't mean it is diverse as a significant percentage of the total population.

The two leading studies in the field use ethnic fractionalization, an approximation of the probability that two randomly selected people from a country do not belong to 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. Unfortunately, there are some inconsistencies as Britannica only published data for 124 out of 190 countries in the years covered, so Alesina et al. the list of 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 groups.” Fearon's version covers fewer countries but was acknowledged by Alesina as "closer to what the theory wants". Fearon's list is therefore used for our ranking below.

Insights

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

Seventeen of the top 20 most diverse countries are African. Obviously, Africa is not a massive, homogeneous entity, as is so often assumed in the West. (“Africa is not a country” has even become a meme.)

The United States ranks 85th, several positions above the United Kingdom, which ranks 109th. Australia, which is notoriously anti-immigration, ranks at the bottom at 140th. Interestingly, it ranks higher than 12 European countries, all of which appear in the bottom 20.

The Most Diverse Countries in the World – Ranking

Source: Fearon, 2003

Mission statement: Dreamstime

      .