The UK Austerity Map

The current UK government has pursued five years of austerity measures as it tries to get the country's deficit under control. One of these measures has been to drastically cut welfare payments.

The Financial Times has used data compiled by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, measuring the impact of government welfare cuts on individual local authorities, and created an Austerity Audit Map of England, Scotland & Wales.

The map provides a choropleth view of the impact of the welfare cuts on each local authority. If you select an area on the map you can view the annual impact on each working adult in the region. This is shown by the average number of pounds taken out of the local economy per working adult.


While looking at the FT's Austerity Map it occurred to me that the least affected areas looked suspiciously like a map of the ruling Conservative party's current constituencies.  Bet2015 has a nice map showing the current seats of the political parties in the UK, so it is easy to make a comparison between the two maps.

Is seems obvious when looking at the two maps placed side-by-side that the present government in the UK has implemented austerity measures that have (perhaps coincidentally) had far less economic impact on supporters of their own voters.