A comparative exercise published by The Common Sense on October 22, 2026 sets out an arresting claim: South Africa may be among the best places in the world to be middle class, and the arithmetic behind it depends heavily on how public institutions have performed. The analysis argues that private arrangements have stepped in where the state has retreated, allowing considerable comfort to endure even where governance has weakened.
The publication’s starting point is a question of institutional accountability. As public services deteriorate and political instability persists, private businesses and organised communities across South Africa are increasingly taking on responsibilities the state can no longer reliably deliver. The Common Sense calls this process enclavisation, a phenomenon it has written about extensively. Private healthcare, good schools, security, independent electricity generation, and locally managed infrastructure now allow families to maintain high living standards despite the weakening of public institutions. The result, the publication argues, is that prosperity can persist even where the state performs poorly, provided families position themselves to benefit from these private arrangements.
That framing sits at the centre of the analysis. The question posed is whether the country’s cost advantages can endure as institutional performance declines. The answer offered is that they can, but conditionally, and through private provision rather than public capacity.
The comparison itself was built on a straightforward premise. Take the quality of life enjoyed by a middle-class South African family and estimate what it would cost to recreate it in another major city. The reference household consists of two working adults and two children, and its lifestyle is measured across six broad categories: housing, transport, education, healthcare, domestic assistance, and leisure.
The benchmarks are specific. Housing is defined as a mortgage on a spacious family house with a garden in a good, secure suburb. The family drives two cars, sends its children to a high-quality primary school and pre-school, and enjoys healthcare comparable to good South African private provision. Full-time domestic help, regular leisure activity, and one substantial local holiday each year complete the picture.
The cities selected for comparison are Johannesburg, Cape Town, London, Perth, Auckland, Toronto, Dubai, Houston, and New York. The mix reflects popular emigration destinations for South Africans and ranges from relatively affordable cities to some of the world’s most expensive international centres. In the published findings, Johannesburg is set as the benchmark at an index level of 100. A city scoring 150 carries an estimated lifestyle basket costing 50 percent more than Johannesburg’s, while a score of 200 means recreating the same lifestyle costs twice as much.
The publication is candid about the limits of the exercise. The figures are indicative estimates rather than complete household budgets, and readers are invited to challenge the assumptions. Different choices about housing, schooling, and other expenses will affect individual results. The central conclusion, however, is that the comparison points to a substantial South African cost advantage, and the precise size of the gap in any particular city is secondary to that broader finding.
Meanwhile, for South African families weighing whether to stay or build a future elsewhere, the publication acknowledges that these are personal decisions about security, opportunity, and children’s prospects. But it argues that alongside what a family might gain by leaving, it is important to consider what it could lose in everyday quality of life. A spacious home with a garden, domestic help, good schools, and regular family outings and holidays can feel like ordinary features of a South African middle-class life. Elsewhere, maintaining that combination demands a substantially higher income, and emigration often brings the value of those comforts into focus when families discover how much they would need to earn to preserve a lifestyle they previously took for granted.
The publication’s conclusion draws the threads together. Some families will prioritise stability and predictability and choose to leave. Others will conclude that South Africa offers a quality of life that is difficult to replicate elsewhere, and for them, staying can be a deliberate investment in their family’s future. The space to live comfortably, the support to raise children, access to good schools and healthcare, and the financial freedom to enjoy life are meaningful measures of prosperity. These are things that families in many of the world’s wealthiest countries struggle to afford, but which remain within reach of South Africa’s middle class. For those who position themselves carefully, the country can remain one of the best places in the world to build a family, enjoy life, and prosper. Whether that private prosperity can hold as public institutions continue to strain is the question the analysis leaves open.