Tony Atkinson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tony Atkinson
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Tony Atkinson at the Festival of Economics in Trento, May 2015
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| Born |
Anthony Barnes Atkinson
4 September 1944 Caerleon, Wales, United Kingdom
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| Died | 1 January 2017 (aged 72) Oxford, England, United Kingdom
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| Nationality | British |
| Spouse(s) | Judith Mandeville |
| Institution | Nuffield College, Oxford London School of Economics |
| Field | Economics of income distribution, poverty, micro-economics |
| School or tradition |
Neo-Keynesian economics |
| Alma mater | Cambridge University |
| Doctoral students |
John Micklewright |
| Influences | James Meade |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Sir Anthony Barnes Atkinson (4 September 1944 – 1 January 2017) was a famous British economist. He taught at the London School of Economics and was a senior researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Tony Atkinson was a student of James Meade. He helped create the modern way of studying inequality and poverty in Britain. He spent over 40 years working on these important topics.
Contents
Tony Atkinson's Early Life and Education
Tony Atkinson was born in Caerleon, a town in Wales. He grew up in Kent, England, and went to Cranbrook School.
After school, at age 17, he worked for IBM for a year. Then he moved to Hamburg, Germany. There, he volunteered in a hospital in a poor part of the city. This experience made him very interested in why some people are poor and others are rich. He also learned a lot from the work of Peter Townsend, a sociologist who studied poverty.
University Studies
Tony Atkinson first studied mathematics at Churchill College, Cambridge. After one year, he switched to economics. He graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1966 with top honors.
Later, he spent time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. At MIT, he worked with Robert Solow, another famous economist.
Tony Atkinson's Career and Teaching
From 1967 to 1971, Tony Atkinson was a fellow at St John's College, Cambridge. He taught about how governments use economics, along with Joseph Stiglitz. Their lectures later became a well-known textbook called "Lectures on Public Economics."
In 1971, when he was just 27, he became a full professor of economics at the University of Essex. In 1976, he became a professor at University College London.
During the 1980s, he worked at the London School of Economics (LSE). There, he led a research program for 12 years. This program studied how taxes and income affect how wealth is shared. He worked with Nick Stern and Mervyn King. He stayed at LSE until 1992, then returned to the University of Cambridge for two more years.
In the 1990s, he advised the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin.
From 1994 to 2005, he was the head of Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1971, he started the Journal of Public Economics. He helped edit this important journal for 25 years.
Tony Atkinson's Main Ideas
Tony Atkinson believed that we could make the world better. He was very optimistic that poverty and inequality could be reduced.
He became interested in economics because of his experiences helping people in Hamburg. He was also inspired by a book called 'The Poor and the Poorest'. This book showed how bad poverty was. But Tony felt it didn't say what to do about it. So, he wrote his own book, 'Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security', in 1969. This book offered solutions.
He also worked closely with Thomas Piketty, another famous economist. Tony felt that Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, showed the problem of inequality very well. But Tony wanted to go further. He wanted to show how inequality could actually be reduced. This led him to write his book, Inequality – What Can Be Done?.
His colleague, Max Roser, said that Tony believed high inequality was not something we just had to accept. Even when others thought nothing could be done, Tony wrote a whole book showing how to fix it.
Tony also admired his own teacher, James Meade, for his positive view of the future. Meade believed in exploring new ways to improve how our economy works.
Tony Atkinson's Work and Research
Tony Atkinson mostly studied how income is shared among people. But he also looked at many other economic and social issues. These included taxes, how wealth is shared, the welfare state (government help for people), health economics, and poverty. During his long career, he wrote over 350 research papers and 24 books. His work often combined ideas and real-world examples.
Measuring Inequality
In 1970, Tony Atkinson wrote a paper called 'On the measurement of inequality'. This paper changed how economists thought about measuring inequality. He introduced a new way to measure inequality called the Atkinson index. This index lets people show how much they dislike inequality.
Tony Atkinson also looked at how rich people can influence government decisions. He showed how they might push for policies that protect their wealth. He suggested many ways to reduce inequality. These included ideas about technology, jobs, social security, sharing wealth, and taxes. He also supported the idea of a basic income, where everyone gets a regular payment from the government.
He helped create the Chartbook of Economic Inequality. This is a useful tool for studying the history of inequality.
Studying Global Poverty
Tony Atkinson was very interested in measuring poverty around the world. One of his most important papers on this topic was 'On the measurement of poverty' from 1987.
From 2013 to 2016, he led a group at the World Bank called the Commission on Global Poverty. This group, also known as the Atkinson Commission, advised international organizations on how to measure and track poverty worldwide.
Before he passed away, he was writing a book about global poverty. His colleagues finished the book for him. It was published in 2019 as 'Measuring Poverty around the World'.
Public Economics and Government Action
Since the 1960s, Tony Atkinson was a leader in developing the field of public economics. This field studies how governments can use economic tools to improve society.
With Joseph Stiglitz, he helped create the theory of optimal taxation. This theory looks at the best ways for governments to collect taxes.
They also wrote the very important textbook "Lectures on Public Economics." This book was re-released in 2015.
In his 2015 book, Inequality: What Can Be Done?, he said that rich people should pay more taxes. He felt they had not paid enough in recent years.
He believed that governments should get involved in markets. For example, he suggested guaranteeing jobs and controlling wages. This would help share economic rewards more fairly. He also studied the history of inequality. He used the term "inequality turn" to describe the time around 1980 when household inequality started to rise. He noted that from the 1980s onwards, people tended to marry others who earned similar amounts. Also, as more women joined the workforce, overall inequality increased.
Tony Atkinson's Influence on Others
Tony Atkinson worked on inequality and poverty for over four decades. He was a mentor to Thomas Piketty, who wrote Capital in the Twenty-First Century. They worked together to build a historical database of top incomes. Piketty called him "the godfather of historical studies of income and wealth."
Angus Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner, remembered the first economics talk he ever heard. It was Tony Atkinson presenting his paper on measuring inequality in 1969. Deaton said it made him think economics was a "pretty cool subject."
Tony Atkinson had a big impact on many younger researchers. He advised at least 60 PhD students. He also worked with many other young scholars on research projects.
Awards and Honors
Tony Atkinson received many awards and honors for his work.
- In 1984, he became a Fellow of the British Academy.
- In 1974, he became a Fellow of the Econometric Society.
- In 1985, he became an Honorary Member of the American Economic Association.
- In 1994, he became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- He was President of the Econometric Society in 1988.
- He was knighted in 2000, which means he received the title "Sir."
- In 2001, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, a high honor from France.
- In 2007, he was the first person to receive the A.SK Social Science Award.
- He was president of the board of the Luxembourg Income Study, which he helped create in the 1980s.
- In 2016, he received the Dan David Prize for his work in "combatting poverty."
- He received 19 honorary doctorates from universities around the world.
Personal Life
Tony Atkinson was married to Judith Mandeville. They met when they were students at Cambridge. They had three children and eight grandchildren.
He loved sailing and walking.
Tony Atkinson passed away on 1 January 2017, in Oxford, England. He was 72 years old and had been battling multiple myeloma, a type of cancer.
See also
- Atkinson–Stiglitz theorem
- Universal basic income in the United Kingdom
