The South region has the highest percentage of "asset wealthy" people in the country, according to the BBC's "Changing UK" report. At 38% we rather surprisingly even beat London. We examine these issues.
The number of single-person households has risen dramatically, but has social policy caught up with this shift in society?
It is easy to imagine, from these statistics, that we are well placed to weather the economic crisis.
Things are rarely that simplistic though and beneath the surface affluence, lie stories of increasing hardship.
A picturesque, prosperous-looking market town, you might imagine.
But the Politics Show South has discovered that behind the image lies a rather different reality.
According to the local Citizens Advice Bureau, their level of enquiries have risen by 26%.
More than half of the Petersfield CAB's clients have an income of under £1,000 a month, and money seems at the forefront of many of their minds. Enquiries about bankruptcy are up by 120%, and employment enquiries, both about redundancy and pay and entitlements, are up by 20%.
Queries about overdrafts have jumped 40% as have those about child benefit.
They have also seen exceptional increases in the number of people asking about divorce and separation (up 20%) and death and bereavement (up 60%).
Merry Christmas, anyone?
And many of these people are just the ones who would normally be driving Britain's economy.
The local council is sufficiently worried by the impact on local businesses that it is sponsoring a rather unusual remedy.
In the hopes that a spot of gluhwein and ice skating will drive away the winter woes, they are transforming the town for three days, between 5 and 7 December, into what they describe as a "traditional winter wonderland".
Will a drop of festive glitz ease the problems?
Will the jingling of Christmas bells spill over into the jingling of cash registers? You can assess the results of the experiment by joining us live on Sunday.
Only the lonely?
Another finding to emerge from the Changing UK survey is the huge increase in the number of single-person households in Britain.
Many of us, of course, are choosing to live alone, but many others are having it thrust upon them - and we will be asking whether social policy has kept in step with society.
We all know about single-person supplements for things like holidays or hotels, but remember that when it comes to paying the council tax, the calculations are based on two adults living at the property.
Share a home and each of you has to stump up half of the council tax. Live alone, and you pay three-quarters all by yourself.
Single occupancy drives up the demand for housing, and single people are likely to lose out in getting into social housing as they are seen as a lower priority than a family.
And high numbers of solo households is either a symptom or a cause (depending on your viewpoint) of the increasing lack of cohesiveness in British society over the past 30 years.
Do we take enough time to care for 'our neighbour'?
The survey has revealed that neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.
Joined up living?
There are schemes to try and join up some of the fragments.
Homeshare is a series of pilot projects bringing together someone with a home but also a need for a little help with someone willing to provide that help in exchange for a home. The schemes are currently running in West Sussex, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.
Then there is the Tandem Befriending Scheme in Oxford that promotes friendships between its volunteers and people who have maybe had social problems.
Or the Befriending Scheme in Petersfield which joins up volunteers with older people via a shared interest.
You could probably find plenty more where you live. But overall they feel a bit like a drop in the ocean - a sticking plaster over a problem for which the politicians and special advisers maybe have no real solution.
Is society becoming more fragmented, or are we harking back to a rose-tinted past that was never actually so cohesive?
Have the politicians got their policies right when they aim them so much at "hard-working families"?
Should we be pandering to the move towards single living by building more and more homes, or looking for a more radical solution?
Send us an email and join the debate.
Peter Henley came live from the Christmas Festival in Petersfield on Sunday 1200 GMT on BBC One.
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