Why one economist believed rising inequality is not an inevitable fact of modern life
In short: Tony Atkinson, the godfather of modern inequality studies, spent four decades proving that economic disparity is a policy choice, not a natural law. By moving beyond mere description to propose concrete solutions, he challenged the fatalism of his peers and reshaped how we measure the health of our societies.
Born in 1944, Tony Atkinson emerged as a towering figure in public economics, driven by a formative experience volunteering in a German hospital during his youth. This period sparked a lifelong obsession with poverty and inequality, leading him to reject the passive observation common in academia. While he mentored influential thinkers like Thomas Piketty, Atkinson often felt that descriptive works—even seminal ones like Capital in the Twenty-First Century—stopped short of providing the necessary roadmap for change. He dedicated his career to bridging this gap, arguing that high levels of inequality are not inevitable but the result of specific political and economic decisions.
Atkinson’s intellectual rigor transformed the field. His 1970 paper, 'On the measurement of inequality,' introduced the 'Atkinson index,' a tool that allowed economists to explicitly incorporate their views on distributional justice into their calculations. This shift from purely objective measurement to value-conscious analysis was revolutionary. He believed that the 'inequality turn'—the rise in household disparity beginning around 1980—was fueled by factors like changing marriage patterns, where high earners increasingly paired with one another, and a failure to address the disproportionate influence of the wealthy on public policy.
Throughout his career, Atkinson remained an 'inveterate explorer of improvements,' a trait he admired in his own teacher, James Meade. He advocated for proactive government interventions, including wage controls, employment guarantees, and robust taxation of the rich. Even while battling multiple myeloma, he continued his work, chairing the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty and writing on how to reduce inequality in practice. When he died in 2017, he left behind a legacy of over 350 research papers and 24 books, cementing his role as a scholar who refused to accept that the world could not be made better.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Tony Atkinson
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