ENGLAND Study finds widening economic gap between North, South

Southern England is benefiting more from the move to a service economy.
LONDON (AP) -- The long-standing social divide in Britain between the poorer North and the richer South appears to be widening, a new study said today.
One reason is an "unprecedented" migration of skilled workers from the North to London between 1991 and 2001, the study said.
People living in the South are likely to be better educated and earn more money than their northern counterparts, according to the in-depth study by the University of Sheffield. Southerners also are less likely to suffer from a long-term illnesses than Northerners, and the South has better access to doctors.
"To the south is the metropolis of Greater London, to the north and west is the 'archipelago of the provinces' -- city islands that appear to be slowly sinking demographically, socially and economically," said the co-author of the report, Professor Daniel Dorling.
More and more, he said, Britain is looking like a country "united only by history, increasingly divided by its geography."
Northern industries dwindle
Industrialization once made many northern cities wealthy, but that changed dramatically when Britain largely switched to a service economy, with southern cities such as London, the capital, benefiting the most.
The researchers used census data from 1991 and 2001 to produce an atlas of 500 maps, which trace socioeconomic trends over the decade.
Although inner-city areas of East London such as Hackney and Tower Hamlets are still the nation's poorest, may regions of southern England remain the richest, with that social divide widening in some areas.
For instance, more than 1.7 million jobs were created in the booming capital-based financial sector between 1991 and 2001, which accelerated growth in the southeast, the study said.