  It will not always be easy to identify whether redistribution in this sense has occurred, since the purposes of those who choose and implement policies are often opaque, and also because changes in policies and institutions result from collective decisions involving many agents with diverse and often conflicting purposes. Former U.S. President Clinton’s 1996 minimum wage legislation, for example, appears to have marginally increased the holdings of workers at the bottom quintile of the income distribution. Whether this was an instance of purposive diachronic redistribution is less clear. It may have been part of an overall plan to improve the position of the least advantaged. Or, instead of reflecting a systematic attempt to intervene on behalf of those at the low end of the labor market, the purpose of the legislation may have been to appease organized labor and a generally dissatisfied public. Still other policies may be adopted for the purpose of bringing about changes in the patterns of holdings, but fail to do so, either because of internal flaws in the policies themselves, or because of countervailing pressure from other factors.