The Student Room Group

Will the North/South divide vanish in our lifetimes?

Talented young people, namely university graduates, are discouraged from living in the South East and London due to high rent costs and high house prices. Some do weather it out and live in these areas, or they live with their parents and work locally, but increasingly graduates are moving to areas where living costs are lower and they can still receive the same pay and comparable quality of life that the South East offers. Few want to live a life where they are struggling to make ends meet or where they will never be able to afford a decent mortgage in their entire life.

Over time this is going to lead to a reduced supply of graduates in the South East and a plentiful supply in the North and Scotland, as well as in other cheaper regions such as Wales and the South West. Companies looking for fresh talent at a relatively low cost (compared to an experienced professional worker) can hire these graduates and benefit greatly from them.

This may lead to great advancements in these cheaper regions over the course of decades, while the South East may experience much slower improvement or even a reverse in quality as companies will have much higher expenditure per worker and therefore less money to invest.

Will this lead to the North/South divide weakening or vanishing over the course of say 50 years? Or will the South become reliant on factors such as immigration to ensure it maintains its supply of fresh skills?
(edited 8 years ago)
Probably, but only because things always tend to change over time, and the North/South divide is comparatively new. In the 19th century London was rich but so was Manchester; Manchester was arguably more influential. In the short term this divide is certainly going to get worse as talented young people empty out of the North.

What I expect will happen is many of those people will see that they're not going to win the golden ticket in London and move back up North to start families. London only makes sense so long as you value a 1 bedroom flat a few tube stops from a fashionable area on par with a five bedroom detatched with spacious garden. True for many 20-somethings, not so much for most 40-somethings.

The North will remain a combination of poor young people who either have little ambition or ability to leave, and wealthy older people who may not have spectacular incomes but a lot of money in property and savings, but those older people will be younger than now, skewed toward the middle aged rather than pensioners.
(edited 8 years ago)
I think we need to do more to tackle discrimination of southerners up north; it should be unacceptable to abuse hard working migrants/students. The north/south divide is a myth anyway, the only real reason for the norths poor performance is a yobbo drinking culture. Plenty of northerners manage to get themselves off the sauce and away from the football and integrate in to mainstream southern society, which is is to be commended.
Original post by JerseyHouse
I think we need to do more to tackle discrimination of southerners up north; it should be unacceptable to abuse hard working migrants/students. The north/south divide is a myth anyway, the only real reason for the norths poor performance is a yobbo drinking culture. Plenty of northerners manage to get themselves off the sauce and away from the football and integrate in to mainstream southern society, which is is to be commended.


What a strange way of seeing things. Drinking culture isn't exclusive to the north in any way, and the idea that an interest in football somehow precludes a person from integrating into "mainstream southern society", whatever the **** that is, is ridiculous. Have you ever actually ventured north of the midlands?
It has already vanished really. It is now the London/Everywhere divide.

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