Shocking Statistic on the UK

ging84

Wales and the north of England is poorer than the 5 or so other richest nations in europe?
this is hardly shocking

CLAPTON

presumably if we divided west wales into three regions then we could have 10 out of the 10 poorest regions

would that mean we could quality for enormous payouts from the rest of Northern Europe?

Thrugelmir

cepheus wrote: »

Not half as meaningless as your reply.

I assume that we are going to be inundated with this drivel in the lead to the General Election.

I was in Hamburg in July, and have have also travelled to Dresden on several occasions. So have a good insight.

vivatifosi

cepheus wrote: »

If Cornwall why not Brittany, the Black Fore st or the Swedish Lakes for the Poorest, and any other capital for the richest?



Not half as meaningless as your reply.



Do you know the difference between North Europe and South Europe? There is even a map to help the geographically challenged

Can't multi quote as on tablet. In terms of Cornwall vs Brittany, they've used NUTS2 areas as their definitions, which throws up some strange areas. It is also why parts of Ireland don't score low... It isn't cut by county in the same way as the UK.

In terms of cutting Europe into two halves, north and a south, that still doesn't explain why the authors omitted the Baltic States, all of which score lower for all NUTS2 regions, though that kind of destroys the story.

I think it's a shame that the report doesn't cover all of the EU because that would raise more interesting questions. Such as how does most of Spain manage to have a reasonably high GDP per capita when it has stubbornly high unemployment?

globalds

cepheus wrote: »

I'm not suggesting we bomb the nine poorest areas to see if it works again though!

What are you suggesting ?

Seems you can't post anything without some political angle ?

IveSeenTheLight

vivatifosi wrote: »

It just goes to show what you can do with statistics.

Show the poorest regions in the EU and you would get a different picture. But pick the very specific and distinctly wealthy (in terms of anywhere in the world) northern Europe and you get a different figure.

Tbh I think it is the author dividing things for their own definition. After all, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are missing from the map and they are also in northern Europe.

Similarly, the traditional geographic placement of the UK is in Western Europe.

It's like saying Victoria Beckham is poor because she has nowhere near the wealth of Roman Abramovitch.

Very valid points, but do you wonder how the same methodology shows London as no1 richest area with 9/10 areas as poor in England Wales and NI.

Does this not imply that there is a disproportionate distribution of wealth in the UK.

robmatic

The statistic looks a lot less shocking when you consider that Inner London has a population of 3.2m and that many of the other cities/regions on those lists have the population of a small town.

robmatic

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Does this not imply that there is a disproportionate distribution of wealth in the UK.

It certainly looks like the wealth is disproportionately distributed towards Scotland... all the poor areas are elsewhere in the UK.

CLAPTON

robmatic wrote: »

It certainly looks like the wealth is disproportionately distributed towards Scotland... all the poor areas are elsewhere in the UK.

that's because Scotland is massively subsidised by England

chewmylegoff

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Very valid points, but do you wonder how the same methodology shows London as no1 richest area with 9/10 areas as poor in England Wales and NI.

Does this not imply that there is a disproportionate distribution of wealth in the UK.

The underlying report did specifically draw attention to the impact of commuting and said that the GDP produced by some areas was only achievable because of the flow of commuters into an area.

However, I also refer you to my previous point - the aggregation of the data is not comparable. The GDP per head in London is given as 45,400 PPP units per capita. The Ile de France is higher at 45,600 per capita.

Therefore greater Paris is richer on this measure than greater London.

However, London has been broken down into inner London (80,400) and outer London (22,500).

Paris has not been broken down and is given as a "greater Paris" figure only. The likely reality is that if you were to break the figures for Paris down further they would look similar to London and that the disparity in wealth between the French regions and capital is broadly similar to that in the UK (at least in terms of the measure of GDP per capita).

Data here:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/1-27022014-AP/EN/1-27022014-AP-EN.PDF