What happened to regional inequality in Britain in the twentieth century?

Abstract

New estimates of regional GDP for Great Britain in the twentieth century differ from those of Crafts but confirm his hypothesis of a U‐shaped regional inequality curve between 1911 and 2001. Comparison of these estimates with revised estimates for 1861–1911 suggests that the decline in inequality in the first half of the twentieth century forms part of a trend of declining regional inequality and catch‐up of the poorer regions with the richest (the South East) dating back to the 1860s at least. This convergence trend was interrupted by the First World War and the subsequent difficulties of Outer Britain in the 1920s when the gap between the South East and the rest widened. However, sometime after 1931 it picked up again. Since 1971 inequality has worsened and catch‐up has stopped; indeed, there has been divergence of the South East from the rest. This divergence has been especially marked since 1991. Although growth for all regions was faster during the period of increasing regional inequality that encompasses the second half of the twentieth century, the golden age of economic growth for regions outside the South East occurred during the long boom following the Second World War.

Exploring the recent upsurge in productivity disparities among European regions

“…In Europe, especially since the publication by Geary and Stark (2002) of a new method to territorialise national GDP across regions, the number of countries with historical regional data has soared 3 . The evidence provided for many countries reveals that, at least since the mid‐nineteenth century, the Williamson curve is true in some countries such as Great Britain (Crafts, 2005; Geary & Stark, 2016), Spain (Martínez‐Galarraga, Rosés, & Tirado, 2010, 2015) and Portugal (Badia‐Miró, Guilera, & Lains, 2012), while other countries such as Belgium (Buyst, 2010, 2011), Sweden (Enflo & Rosés, 2015) and France (Combes, Lafourcade, Thisse, & Toutain, 2011; Rosés & Sanchis, 2019) show a persistent decline in regional disparities in the final decades of the nineteenth century. The historical evidence is less conclusive for Italy because of the traditional north‐south divide (Felice, 2011).…”

Practice running ahead of theory? Political economy and the economic lessons of UK devolution

“…15 Geary and Stark do not provide an explanation for their empirical findings, but from a policy perspective it is notable that for regions outside the South East the golden age coincided with the Second World War and period of the long boom until the 1970s rather than the more liberalised (globalised) UK economy of the late twentieth century (Geary and Stark, 2016). After 1979 activist regional policy fell out of favour.…”

Inequalities in education, skills, and incomes in the UK: The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The large differences across the UK are well illustrated by Blundell et al (2020) Regional economic inequalities are not new. Geary and Stark (2016) show that the South East has been the richest region of the UK since at least the 1860s, though regional inequalities reduced gradually between the 1860s and the 1970s, since when they have increased again. As show, in terms of average household incomes, the big winner since the 1970s has been the South East -moving further ahead of the UK average, while the Midlands in particular have fallen back.…”