It is a sad and shameful reflection on the complacent state of the economics “establishment” that Tony Atkinson was not awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Economics as an academic discipline has largely sidelined poverty and the inequalities of power, wealth and income that shape society – on which Atkinson principally worked – as well as neglecting unpaid work caring for others and uncosted damage to the environment. Amartya Sen wrote of Atkinson, “our understanding of poverty and inequality in particular has been totally transformed by his foundational work.” I know of no one involved in research on poverty who did not regard him as pre-eminent in his scholarship, rigour, resolution, productivity and modesty.
Atkinson, in this his last book, wrote: “I became an economist in the 1960s on account of reading The Poor and the Poorest… by Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend.” His first book published fifty years ago was Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security, and he maintained his interest in and interaction with social policy throughout his life.
The final book that he completed, despite his illness, was Inequality: What can be done? (which he dedicated “To the wonderful people who work in the National Health Service”); for those unfamiliar with his work who are interested in policy, this is where to start. He was working on Measuring poverty around the world until days before his death. Sadly it remained unfinished and incomplete, a first draft with gaps, that has been edited for publication by Micklewright and Brandolini; they discuss in illuminating footnotes where the text might have gone but have wisely not added conclusions where Atkinson had yet to draft them.
The book is about poverty statistics; these “matter because they motivate people to tackle a key challenge.” Chapters deal with concepts of poverty, the collection of data and its comparability, global poverty and then, in four detailed chapters, descriptions and discussion of national poverty statistics in 60 countries in four regions of the world. While Atkinson had prepared the structure of the whole book and set out questions to be considered, the book is frustrating in that his conclusions on many of the most interesting questions are not there. Nevertheless, from his wide experience and his erudition there are insights and questions to engage researchers for many years.
Defining and measuring poverty raises many questions and Atkinson provides a summary checklist. In measuring monetary poverty, should it be based on income or consumption, should the count be of people or households, what allowance should be made for differences in needs, how is depth of poverty to be measured? In measuring non-monetary poverty or capabilities, what dimensions should be included? On data, does it exist, what area does it cover, what is the sample, who is missing? Is the data comparable over time and with other countries? With so much diversity in definition and measurement, it would have been helpful if Atkinson had spelled out a recommended standard, an Atkinson All-round Approach: perhaps he would have done this but sadly he did not. Yet, always positive, he concluded that since he started work there has been much progress and that estimates of poverty while imperfect are generally “fit for purpose.”
Two of Atkinson’s collaborators provide ‘Afterwords’ on two of Atkinson’s particular concerns. Francois Bourguignon writes on the relationship between growth, inequality and poverty reduction. He concludes that the evidence now rejects the Kuznets hypothesis that development first leads to greater inequality and then to a reduction in inequality: “Today a consensus seems to have formed that there is no systematic relationship for developing countries between the level of development, as measured by GDP per capita, and the degree of inequality, as shown by available inequality measures.” The different question of how inequality may affect growth gets a more diverse answer: “The estimated effect of inequality on growth appeared significantly negative in some cases, nonsignificant in others, and even significantly positive in still others.” Thus, while the relationships are “too complex to yield uniform features across countries”, within countries pro-poor policies can reduce poverty and inequality; these latter policies include human capital accumulation, training and affirmative action to fight ethnic and gender discrimination – all firmly relying on social policies.
Nicholas Stern writes on poverty and climate change, having with Atkinson “talked through the issues and questions many times in the dozen or so years before he died.” In contrast to the diverse findings of Bourguignon, Stern presents a clear and unambiguous picture; he describes the intense effects of a 1°C rise in global surface temperature that has already occurred and the dangerous effects of a rise of over 2°C rise that is all too likely; a 4 or 5°C rise that would occur if nothing changes would have altogether devastating effects. All this matters for poverty because failure to manage climate change would hit the poorest earliest and hardest. Limiting global warming requires concerted global action, which requires political will. Stern concludes: “Tony did not believe that an absence of political will was something that just happens. He thought that political will can be strengthened by clear and rational analysis and argument. Whilst that task is often difficult, it is the duty of academics to take on the policy issues with great openness and rigour and engage in strong public debate.”
Stern’s final words are a fitting epitaph on Tony Atkinson’s career – “a shining example to future researchers of the duty to bring their work to the most important issues of their time, while showing them how it can be done.”
