North has fewer millionaires but is more prosperous overall

Northern Ireland has fewer millionaires today than it had a year ago, but it is also displaying signs of increased prosperity thanks to a jump in average earnings and rising house prices, according to new research which maps prosperity drivers across the UK.

Average earnings in the North have risen at the fastest pace in the UK – by 9 per cent to £23,643 – while house prices have also increased by 4 per cent, bringing the cost of an average home up to £119,500 in 2016, the research shows.

The UK Prosperity Map, compiled for the global financial services group Barclays, highlights that GDP per capita in the North is growing at one of the fastest rates in the UK this year at 11.3 per cent to £17,948.

The map is put together using a number of different measures including GDP, employment statistics, enterprise figures, household spending and data on local millionaires to give an overall index score for each region. Each region is then awarded scores on a range of performance measures.

Charity donations

This year Northern Ireland scored particularly highly on exam achievements and charity donations but poorly when it came to business births and deaths.

Overall, the North moved up one place to fifth in the Barclays Prosperity Index. London topped the polls, with the southeast of England runner-up and the east of England in third place.

Barclays says the UK Prosperity Map shows an “overall uplift in prosperity across every region of the UK” this year. Although London remains the key driver of UK prosperity, Barclays says there is evidence that other cities are beginning to close the gap. Cambridge registered sharper house price growth than London at 14 per cent while Scotland also out-performed the rest of the UK in terms of increase in household wealth, rising by 13 per cent since 2015.

According to Barclays 690,000 people in the UK are currently worth at least seven figures – which it calculates is the equivalent of 1 in every 67 adults being a millionaire – though that figure marks a year-on-year fall of 3.8 per cent in the number of millionaires in the UK.

The bank estimates that the number of millionaires in Northern Ireland has also dropped slightly from 14,000 to 13,000.