Anthony Heath studied classics and economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving a double first. After a spell in the Treasury he returned to Cambridge to study for a doctorate on social exchange theory with John H Goldthorpe as supervisor. He then moved to Jesus College, Oxford, as a tutorial fellow, followed by an official fellowship and then a professorial fellowship at Nuffield College, when he became Oxford's first professor of sociology in 1999, and founded the Oxford Department of Sociology. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1992. He is also a fellow of the European Academy of Sociology. At Oxford he first worked with Chelly Halsey and John Ridge investigating social class inequalities in education, analysing the 1972 Nuffield social mobility survey and working in the political arithmetic tradition. He has been closely associated with this tradition of research ever since, analysing large-scale social surveys to investigate 'real world' issues of class, gender and ethnic stratification. A recent study in this tradition is his 2001 Oxford Admissions Study, which investigated the extent to which Oxford admissions procedures followed meritocratic principles. Together with Roger Jowell and John Curtice, he directed the 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997 British Election Surveys, focussing particularly on the topics of class voting, social change and the future of the left in Britain. More recently he has focussed on issues of ethnic inequality, particularly on ‘ethnic penalties’ in education and the labour market. He coordinated a major cross-national investigation of ethnic inequalities in the labour market in Western countries, comparing the magnitude of the ethnic penalties experienced by different minorities in different countries. Current work includes a major new national study of ethnic minority political integration based on the Ethnic Minority British Election Survey. He leads the Centre for social investigation, an interdisciplinary research group based at Nuffield College. He has written reports for government on discrimination in the labour market, social cohesion, and on national identity.
