Fair and Diverse Allocation of Scarce Resources

TL;DR

This paper proposes a fairness-aware resource allocation method that balances geographical diversity and demographic fairness, prioritizing vulnerable populations during crises like pandemics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach integrating geographical and demographic fairness to improve resource distribution for vulnerable groups.

Findings

The approach enhances geographical coverage while reducing demographic disparities.

Prioritizes vulnerable populations effectively during resource allocation.

Applicable to various scarce resources beyond healthcare.

Abstract

We aim to design a fairness-aware allocation approach to maximize the geographical diversity and avoid unfairness in the sense of demographic disparity. During the development of this work, the COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading in the U.S. and other parts of the world on large scale. Many poor communities and minority groups are much more vulnerable than the rest. To provide sufficient vaccine and medical resources to all residents and effectively stop the further spreading of the pandemic, the average medical resources per capita of a community should be independent of the community's demographic features but only conditional on the exposure rate to the disease. In this article, we integrate different aspects of resource allocation and seek a synergistic intervention strategy that gives vulnerable populations with higher priority when distributing medical resources. This prevention-centered strategy is a trade-off between geographical coverage and social group fairness. The proposed principle can be applied to other scarce resources and social benefits allocation.