Thread by @FullFact

The problem with comparing the UK's richest regions with the rest of the world — in one thread 🌏

Have you seen this chart comparing Britain's economy with other world economies?

It shows Britain’s richest region to have a GDP per person of 11.5x the national average – with other countries having a much smaller gap between rich and poor regions by comparison.
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But comparing the regional GDP gap between rich and poor regions in different countries tells you more about how each country collects data than how unequal their regions are.
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That’s because the UK has data at London borough level – while no other country in the list has sub-city economic breakdowns.
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Let’s take Italy and the UK. The UK’s richest region (using GDP per person in current prices) is Camden & the City of London (12x the UK average). Italy’s is Milan (2x the Italy average). stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?Dat…
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But comparing them means comparing the whole of Milan and its surrounding area (including all its rich and poor areas) with just the richest areas of London.
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If you look at all of Greater London, GDP per person is about 1.7x the national average, lower than other countries’ richest cities like Ingolstadt (3.5x ) and Washington DC (3.2x)
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And the USA doesn’t even have statistics at a city level – just at state level (with the exception of Washington DC). So, for example, we have no idea how rich New York City (let alone Manhattan) is.
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The graph correctly shows that that since 2000 regional inequality has risen in the UK and other countries (though GDP per person is a measure of economic development, not how rich or poor people in those regions are).
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But in summary it doesn’t really help us compare Britain’s regional equality against other countries because of how the data is collected.
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Read more in our factcheck here: fullfact.org/econmy/regiona…