Inequality in South Africa is high, whether measured by income or wealth. One of the results is that there’s acute public scrutiny of executive compensation.
This is understandable given that the skew in rewards for executives compared with wages of workers is one of the key drivers of rising inequality – in South Africa and across the globe.
Drawing on recent publicly available data, we undertook a preliminary analysis comparing chief executive officer (CEO) pay with average monthly pay ratios in the country. In our analysis CEO pay included a base salary and a variety of benefits. We then compared the CEO’s pay to the overall average monthly earning provided by the country’s statistics agency, StatsSA.