  What kind of concept is redistribution when used in the senses defined above? All of these understandings of redistribution are purely descriptive. We needn’t evaluate a pattern change, a purposive pattern change, or a taking to identify them. These understandings identify distinct but partially overlapping sets of practices and actions as redistributive. Some policies and institutional changes, for example, may involve redistribution in all of these senses. Take, for instance, Taiwan, which, in the course of a decade, radically reduced levels of income inequality — thereby involving a case of diachronic redistribution. Some studies (e.g., Kuo et al. 1984) suggest that these pattern changes were at least partly the intent of a package of policies that included agricultural reform and increased expenditure on health and education — thereby exhibiting purposive diachronic redistribution. And among the most important agricultural reforms were changes in land distribution — thereby involving redistribution as taking.