Before diving in, it is worth saying something very briefly about why empirical results might be of interest to philosophers as they theorize about distributive justice. One might think, after all, that philosophers tend to focus less on what people actually tend to do and be like, as opposed to what they should do and be like. Nevertheless, in recent years philosophers in general have paid increasing attention to empirical research, and with respect to matters of distributive justice, a few important reasons for doing so are the following: