🇿🇦 South Africa·Net wealth per adult (USD)
How does your net worth compare in South Africa?
Enter your household net worth after debts. See your percentile — and what it actually means.
Our household is worth about $AFTER DEBTS in South Africa.
Your position · South Africa households
TOP50%
Lower middle
Below the South Africa median of $5K. Mostly renters, often with positive cash savings.
You outrank 50% of households in South Africa. That's 1.0× the South Africa median net worth.
The anchors of the distribution
Median, mean, top decile.
The median household in South Africa is worth $5K. The mean is $24K: the 4.7× gap is the signature of a long right tail. The top decile begins at $78K; the bottom decile sits below $1K.
Bottom decile
$1K
Often students, young renters, or households with negative net worth from consumer credit.
Median household
$5K
You sit $41 below the median.
Top decile starts at
$78K
$73K away from joining the top decile.
The full distribution
Household wealth in South Africa, on a log scale.
Each bar is a wealth bracket; its height is the share of all households in that bracket. The x-axis is logarithmic, so a small and a large fortune don't look like they live on different planets. Half of South Africa sits below the dashed median line; one in ten sit above the top-decile line.
Below median Above median Top quartile Top decile You
Each bar is a decile of households, 10% each; its height is how tightly that tenth is packed in wealth terms, derived from the published decile thresholds. The top bar covers everyone above the ninth decile.
Where this number ranks abroad
Your net worth, across comparable countries.
Same household-net-worth methodology, converted to each country's currency at approximate exchange rates. Where your number lands tells you something different in each economy.
Sort by
Country
Median household
Your position
🇦🇷Argentina
$4K
Top 46%1.2× their median
🇿🇦South Africayour country
$5K
Top 50%1.0× their median
🇧🇷Brazil
$6K
Top 55%0.9× their median
🇲🇽Mexico
$19K
Top 79%0.3× their median
🇸🇬Singapore
$113K
Top 92%0.0× their median
The filled bar shows your position on each country's distribution; the notch sits at the country median. Cross-country figures use approximate market exchange rates; inter-quantile points are interpolated from published deciles.
Three numbers worth the asterisk
What the percentile hides.
The mean vs median gap
The mean is 4.7× the median.
The median household in South Africa holds $5K; the mean is $24K. That gap is the signature of a long right tail: a small number of very wealthy households pulls the average up, which is why the median is the truer middle.
The first rung
The first $3K separates the bottom from the middle.
Below the lower deciles, households are typically renters with limited financial assets. Above this line, a primary residence enters the picture and the asset base compounds. The moment of buying is the single biggest step on the wealth ladder.
The pension blind spot
Your real economic wealth is higher than this.
This measure excludes accrued entitlements from public and most occupational pension schemes, so the real economic wealth of a typical household is meaningfully higher than the figure shown. The wealthier you are, the smaller that adjustment is in proportion.
Go global?
Type the same number into the global wealth pyramid to see your tier among billions of adults worldwide.
→
Next steps
Four ways to act on this number.
Am I rich in South Africa? (income)
The income twin of this page: your percentile and tier from the same survey family.
Compare→
Saving rate, ranked
How much of your take-home pay you keep, versus other economies.
Compare→
Can I afford a house in South Africa?
What you can buy at your income and current mortgage rates.
Calculate→
Compound your next milestone
See what a lump sum becomes at 5%, 7% and 10% over 10, 20 and 30 years.
Run it→
Frequently asked questions
Per the UBS Global Wealth Databook 2023 (end-2022), only 0.2% of South African adults have wealth above USD 1,000,000 — that's the practical "top 1%" line. Just 4.8% have wealth above USD 100,000 (so USD 100,000 puts you near the 95th percentile). South Africa's wealth Gini is 88.8 — the highest in the UBS sample.
The median South African adult had a net wealth of USD 5,141 (end-2022 UBS data). The mean was USD 23,956 — about 4.7× the median, reflecting extreme wealth concentration. 73.5% of South African adults had less than USD 10,000 in net wealth.
Statistics South Africa does not publish a household wealth distribution survey, so the standard cross-country source is the UBS Global Wealth Databook, which reports net wealth per adult in USD. Local-currency conversion at end-2022 (~ZAR 17 per USD): median ≈ R87,000, mean ≈ R407,000.
South Africa has the world's highest measured wealth Gini (88.8 per UBS). The legacy of apartheid spatial planning, persistent racial disparities in land ownership and education, very high unemployment (~33%), and limited intergenerational asset accumulation among the Black majority all contribute. Around three-quarters of adults have less than USD 10,000 in net wealth, while a small minority — concentrated in the white community and a smaller Black professional class — holds the majority of the country's wealth.
South Africa has roughly the same wealth Gini as Brazil (88.4) and significantly higher than Mexico (79.3) or Argentina (80.0). Its median wealth per adult (USD 5,141) is similar to Brazil's (USD 5,702) and far below Mexico's (USD 18,920). The mean (USD 23,956) is also low relative to mean-wealth peers — South Africa's per-capita wealth is depressed by high inequality even though aggregate output is higher than many other emerging economies.
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AR
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AU
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AT
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BR
Brazil
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CA
Canada
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FR
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DE
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IT
Italy
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JP
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MX
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SG
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ES
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CH
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NL
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GB
the United Kingdom
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US
the United States
Median net worth in the United States