Demographic Parity Tails for Regression

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel regression fairness framework focusing on distribution tails to improve fairness without sacrificing overall accuracy, using optimal transport theory.

Contribution

It proposes a targeted fairness approach in regression that constrains only distribution tails, offering a more nuanced and interpretable method based on optimal transport.

Findings

The method achieves fairness in targeted distribution regions.

The approach provides theoretical risk bounds and fairness guarantees.

Experimental results validate improved fairness with maintained accuracy.

Abstract

Demographic parity (DP) is a widely studied fairness criterion in regression, enforcing independence between the predictions and sensitive attributes. However, constraining the entire distribution can degrade predictive accuracy and may be unnecessary for many applications, where fairness concerns are localized to specific regions of the distribution. To overcome this issue, we propose a new framework for regression under DP that focuses on the tails of target distribution across sensitive groups. Our methodology builds on optimal transport theory. By enforcing fairness constraints only over targeted regions of the distribution, our approach enables more nuanced and context-sensitive interventions. Leveraging recent advances, we develop an interpretable and flexible algorithm that leverages the geometric structure of optimal transport. We provide theoretical guarantees, including risk bounds and fairness properties, and validate the method through experiments in regression settings.