What is Proxy Discrimination?

TL;DR

This paper surveys different definitions of proxy discrimination, analyzing their foundations in statistical, causal, and intentional notions, and discusses their limitations and applications.

Contribution

It provides a unified framework for understanding various notions of proxy discrimination and critically examines their conceptual foundations.

Findings

Different notions rely on statistical, causal, or intentional criteria.

Each notion has specific limitations and use cases.

The framework clarifies conceptual ambiguities in proxy discrimination.

Abstract

The near universal condemnation of proxy discrimination hides a disagreement over what it is. This work surveys various notions of proxy and proxy discrimination found in prior work and represents them in a common framework. These notions variously turn on statistical dependencies, causal effects, and intentions. It discusses the limitations and uses of each notation and of the concept as a whole.