  Discussions of redistribution are not always very specific about which kinds of subjects they are concerned with, or about the possible significance of the fact that policies will be more or less redistributive depending on how these subjects are defined. Take, for example, the following claim by Harvard economist Richard Freeman (1999, p. 12), who claims that a set of policies he proposes will result in “substantial income redistribution from those who have gained so much in the past 15 to 20 years…for it results in improving the living standards of those now at or near the bottom.” The referent of ‘those’, in both the first and second clauses, could be understood as picking out groups of specific individuals (a set of proper names), or group statistical aggregates (the top or bottom quintile). If the claim refers to groups of particular individuals, then lack of change in the pattern of holdings between the top and bottom income quintiles needn’t mean that no redistribution has taken place. If substantial numbers of people have moved up or down, then redistribution (in this sense) has taken place. My focus in this entry will be on the issue of the baseline, since this seems most fundamental.