A Causal Framework for Observational Studies of Discrimination

TL;DR

This paper develops a causal framework for observational discrimination studies, addressing measurement and conceptual challenges, and demonstrates how to estimate causal effects under certain conditions using real and simulated data.

Contribution

It introduces a new causal estimand for discrimination analysis and shows how to estimate it considering event timing and ignorability assumptions.

Findings

Causal effects can be estimated under specific ignorability conditions.

Application to real data illustrates the framework's practical utility.

Simulation studies support the robustness of the proposed method.

Abstract

In studies of discrimination, researchers often seek to estimate a causal effect of race or gender on outcomes. For example, in the criminal justice context, one might ask whether arrested individuals would have been subsequently charged or convicted had they been a different race. It has long been known that such counterfactual questions face measurement challenges related to omitted-variable bias, and conceptual challenges related to the definition of causal estimands for largely immutable characteristics. Another concern, which has been the subject of recent debates, is post-treatment bias: many studies of discrimination condition on apparently intermediate outcomes, like being arrested, that themselves may be the product of discrimination, potentially corrupting statistical estimates. There is, however, reason to be optimistic. By carefully defining the estimand -- and by considering the precise timing of events -- we show that a primary causal quantity of interest in discrimination studies can be estimated under an ignorability condition that may hold approximately in some observational settings. We illustrate these ideas by analyzing both simulated data and the charging decisions of a prosecutor's office in a large county in the United States.