Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the most linguistically diverse nation on the planet, but also one of the world’s least developed countries. What accounts for that heterogeneity? Can this explain weak development outcomes, or do other factors – such as geographical constraints or historical legacies – play the more significant role? For this paper, we assembled a unique database showing the extent of linguistic diversity in PNG’s 85 rural districts in order to investigate its impact on human development (measured using child mortality and school attendance). We find some evidence of a relationship between linguistic diversity and development, but a careful reading of PNG’s history suggests that it would be mistaken to interpret this as evidence of heterogeneity impeding development. Whereas some economists see diversity as having a linear relationship with the time-distance since human settlement, we argue that shifting crop cultivation technologies, warfare, disease and environmental convulsions – in tandem with time-depth – offer the better explanation.

About the presenters:

Jon Fraenkel is a Professor of Comparative Politics in the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. He was formerly a Senior Research Fellow based at the Australian National University (2007-12) and the University of the South Pacific in Fiji (1995-2007). He is Pacific correspondent for The Economist, and has published extensively on the politics of Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Tonga, Samoa and Papua New Guinea. He works also on deeply divided societies, particularly Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Colin Filer, Honorary Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Colin has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Between 1975 and 1994 he taught anthropology and sociology at the Universities of Glasgow (1975-82) and Papua New Guinea (1983-94). From 1991 to 1994 he also managed the UPNG business arm, Unisearch PNG. From 1995 to 2000, he was head of the Social and Environmental Studies Division at the PNG National Research Institute. From 2001 to 2012 he was Convenor of the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program in the College of Asia and the Pacific. He is now a member of the Resources, Environment and Development Group in the Crawford School.