Professor Sir Tony Atkinson, Senior Research Fellow at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, has been awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal Statistics Society for his pioneering work in social economics.

Professor Atkinson's research focuses on the measurement of inequality and its wider implications for society. Announcing the fellowship, the Royal Statistics Society praised his research as "rooted in important substantive questions, and informed by the rigorous application of statistical method to extensive sources of data".

A leading authority on the measurement of poverty and inequality, Professor Atkinson has over the past year chaired the World Bank Commission on Global Poverty, which is expected to report its findings later this month. The Commission will advise on the best ways to measure and monitor global poverty, to assist the World Bank in its mission of aim of ending extreme and chronic poverty by 2030. Professor Atkinson gave the keynote lecture at the the launch of the Commission’s interim report.