“Levelling up” has been the British political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. Both the left and the right agree: regional inequality has worsened in recent years, and coherent policies are needed to rectify the problem. Stark differences in regional and local productivity are the key cause.
The focus on productivity is crucial. Improving the productivity of a region or locality should lead to sustainable rises in growth, income growth and employment. A key measure of productivity is gross value added (GVA) per head. It is an estimate of the value of the economic output of a worker in an industry, minus the value of intermediate inputs used in the production process.
A report by the London School of Economics
