Country comparison: South Africa / United States of America

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for South Africa and United States. There, we provide many explanations and details per country that go far beyond this comparison.

General information

	South Africa	United States
Region:	Southern Africa	North America
Area:	1,219,090 km²	9,831,510 km²
National language:	Zulu	English
Government form:	Parliamentary republic	Federal presidential republic
Independent since:	1910 AD	1776 AD
Capital:	Pretoria	Washington, D.C.

Population

Details for South Africa and the United States

	South Africa	United States
Population:	59,392,000	331,894,000
Inhabitants/km²:	48.7	33.8
Life expectancy males:	Ø 62 years	Ø 75 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 68 years	Ø 80 years
Average age:	Ø 28.0 years	Ø 38.5 years
Birth rate:	20.33 ‰	10.90 ‰
Death rate:	9.43 ‰	10.30 ‰
Migrationrate:	-0.12 ‰	3.02 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	South Africa	United States
Political stability:	41	65
Civil rights:	54	83
Health:	32	71
Climate:	95	66
Cost of Living:	49	38
Popularity:	40	71

Economy

Details for South Africa and the United States

	South Africa	United States
Currency:	South African rand (1 ZAR = 100 Cents)	US dollar (1 USD =100 Cents)
Unemployment rate:	28.8 %	5.4 %
Inflation rate:	4.61 %	4.70 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	47.12 %	100.00 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	29.20 %	36.60 %
Average income:	6,530 US$	70,930 US$
Corruption index:	57 (bad)	31 (moderate)

	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	419,015 M US$	7.06 M US$	23,315,081 M US$	70.25 M US$
Gross national product:	387,776 M US$	6.53 M US$	23,539,918 M US$	70.93 M US$
Exported goods:	130,885 M US$	2.20 M US$	2,556,638 M US$	7.70 M US$
Imported goods:	104,806 M US$	1.76 M US$	3,401,688 M US$	10.25 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for South Africa and the United States

	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	750,000 km	12.63 km	6,586,610 km	19.85 km
Railways:	20,986 km	0.35 km	293,564 km	0.88 km
Harbours:	105	0.0018	3,627	0.0109
Passenger airports:	22	0.0004	436	0.0013

Energy balance

Details for South Africa and the United States

	ZAF: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	207.10 bn kWh	3.49 m kWh	3.902 tn kWh	11.76 m kWh
Energy production:	234.50 bn kWh	3.95 m kWh	4.095 tn kWh	12.34 m kWh
Energy export:	16.55 bn kWh	278,655.86 kWh	9.70 bn kWh	29,211.16 kWh
Energy imports:	10.56 bn kWh	177,800.96 kWh	72.72 bn kWh	219,106.27 kWh
CO2 emissions:	439.64 m t	7,402.31 t	4.82 bn t	14,515.85 t

Telecommunication

Details for South Africa and the United States

	South Africa	United States
International dialing:	+27	+1
Internet domain:	.za	.us

	ZAF total	ZAF per 1000 inh.	USA total	USA per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	1,472,191	25	101,526,000	306
Mobile cellulars:	100,328,005	1689	351,477,000	1059
Internet server:	4,761,000	80	505,000,000	1522
Internet users:	41,574,579	700	301,691,414	909
Broadband Internet:	1,694,648	29	127,032,000	383

Healthcare system

Details for South Africa and the United States

	South Africa	United States
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	2.80	2.87
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	0.91	2.59
Diabetes:	12.7 %	10.8 %
HIV:	6.90 %	0.20 %
Tuberculosis:	5.13 ‰	0.03 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	78.0 %	74.0 %
Smokers:	20.3 %	23.0 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: South Africa and United States

	South Africa	United States
Daytime temperatures:	24.7 °C	18.9 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	11.6 °C	7.3 °C
Water temperature:	19.6 °C	17.7 °C
Rel. humidity:	62 %	67 %
Rain days:	4.7	7.1
Sunshine hours per day:	8.5	7.2

Native languages

	South Africa	United States
English:	9.6 %	82.1 %
Zulu:	22.7 %	n/a
Xhosa:	16.0 %	n/a
Afrikaans:	13.5 %	n/a
Spanish:	n/a	10.7 %
Sepedi:	9.1 %	n/a
Tswana:	8.0 %	n/a
Sotho:	7.6 %	n/a
Tsonga:	4.5 %	n/a
Swazi:	2.5 %	n/a
Venda:	2.4 %	n/a
Ndebele:	2.1 %	n/a
Chinese:	n/a	0.9 %
French:	n/a	0.7 %
German:	n/a	0.6 %
Italian:	n/a	0.6 %
Tagalog:	n/a	0.4 %
Polish:	n/a	0.3 %
Korean:	n/a	0.3 %
Vietnamese:	n/a	0.2 %
Russian:	n/a	0.2 %
Portuguese:	n/a	0.2 %
Japanese:	n/a	0.2 %
Eskimo:	n/a	0.0 %
other:	2.0 %	2.6 %

Religions

	South Africa	United States
Christianity:	68.6 %	78.5 %
Nondenominational:	15.1 %	n/a
Jewry:	0.2 %	1.8 %
Sikhism:	n/a	1.6 %
Islam:	1.5 %	1.1 %
Hinduism:	n/a	1.0 %
Buddhism:	n/a	0.7 %
other:	14.6 %	15.3 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

South Africa	United States of America
All information: South Africa	All information: United States
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