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You know what a map of Britain normally looks like - but this is how our country would look if you measured it by household wealth rather than kilometres.

This is how weird it looks:

Scotland is a tiny shadow of what it once was, the North East is squashed into a corner. Meanwhile London is bloated out of all recognition.

That's because the average household wealth in London is MUCH greater than it is anywhere else in the UK. And when you expand the region to reflect that it gets huge.

Why London is so big

We took ONS data on the median wealth of each region and weighted it according to the number of people living there.

We then altered the size of the regions on the UK map proportional to the income.

We coloured the map to signify how each region's median household wealth has changed since 2006.

What we found

London. Just LOOK at London. It's ridiculously out of proportion to the rest of the country; even with the wealthy South East surrounding it.

Scotland doesn't appear to have much money in it, but that's because relatively few people live there.

The North East is having a VERY bad time of it. According to the ONS measure of wealth it's the only region where people are POORER than they were before the recession - and not even slightly poorer but a whopping 10%!

Compare that to London, where soaring house prices saw people 31% better off than eight years earlier!

How do you measure 'wealth' anyway?

The ONS defined wealth in four ways:

Property wealth - your house

Physical wealth - the stuff in your house and in your pockets

Financial wealth - what's in your bank and investments. This is where the biggest difference between rich and poor people shows up

Pension wealth - pretty obvious, this one and it's the biggest proportion of total UK wealth

Limitations

Most importantly, the ONS didn't adjust its figures for inflation. If you put your household worth into some sort of inflation calculator, we're all about 25% worse off than these figures suggest. What does that mean?

Only people in London are keeping their heads above water right now.

Other caveats: The survey took the median wealth, which is good for weeding out outliers, but doesn't reflect that, for example, London has a lot of SUPER rich people living in it - which would likely distort the map even further.

It also doesn't measure corporate wealth, although we suspect the picture would be similarly weighted to the South.