Bailey (1963) and Poisson regression on two factors

Consider the following dataset, from A Theory of Extramarital Affairs, by Ray Fair, published in 1978 in the Journal of Political Economy, with 563 observations, and nine variables : eight covariates, and the variable of interest, the number of extramarital affairs, over a year,

base = read.table("http://freakonometrics.free.fr/baseaffairs.txt",header=TRUE)
str(base)
'data.frame':	563 obs. of  9 variables:
 $ SEX         : int  1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 ...
 $ AGE         : num  37 27 32 57 22 32 22 57 32 22 ...
 $ YEARMARRIAGE: num  10 4 15 15 0.75 1.5 0.75 15 15 1.5 ...
 $ CHILDREN    : int  0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 ...
 $ RELIGIOUS   : int  3 4 1 5 2 2 2 2 4 4 ...
 $ EDUCATION   : int  18 14 12 18 17 17 12 14 16 14 ...
 $ OCCUPATION  : int  7 6 1 6 6 5 1 4 1 4 ...
 $ SATISFACTION: int  4 4 4 5 3 5 3 4 2 5 ...
 $ Y           : int  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...

Let us focus on two categorical covariates, related to the importance of religion, and the occupation

df=data.frame(y=base$Y,
              religion=as.factor(base$RELIGIOUS),
              occupation=as.factor(base$OCCUPATION),
              expo = 1)
(E=xtabs(expo~religion+occupation,data=df))
        occupation
religion  1  2  3  4  5  6  7
       1  4  1  8  4 16  9  0
       2 23  3 11 17 56 36  6
       3 29  1 10 12 39 25  2
       4 38  7 12 21 59 44  2
       5 13  1  3 10 19 19  3
(N=xtabs(y~religion+occupation,data=df))
        occupation
religion  1  2  3  4  5  6  7
       1  4  1 13  3 13  7  0
       2  1  1 13 10 25 43 10
       3 15  0 12 11 34 35  1
       4 24  1  3 15 11  9 10
       5  6  0  0  6 11  7  0

The two tables above are the exposure (number of observations) and the number of extramarital affairs, here as contingency tables. Without any covariate, one can assume that N\sim\mathcal{P}(\lambda\cdot E), where \lambda would be

sum(N)/sum(E)
[1] 0.6305506

The idea with the margin method is to assume that N_{i,j}=E_{i,j}\cdot\lambda_{i,j} where \lambda_{i,j}=A_i\cdot B_j. Bailey (1963) added two series of constraints : per row, \sum_j N_{i,j}=\sum_j E_{i,j}\cdot A_i\cdot B_j for any i and similarly, for any j \sum_i N_{i,j}=\sum_i E_{i,j}\cdot A_i\cdot B_jFrom the first series of constraints, write A_i=\frac{\sum_j N_{i,j}}{\sum_j E_{i,j}\cdot B_j} and use the second series to write B_j=\frac{\sum_i N_{i,j}}{\sum_i E_{i,j}\cdot A_i}Because we need A_i‘s to compute B_j‘s, and conversely, it is natural to consider some iterative procedure to solve it. Observe that we do not have unicity…

Consider here some starting values for A_i‘s and B_j‘s

A=rep(1,length(levels(df$religion)))
B=rep(1,length(levels(df$occupation)))*sum(N)/sum(E)
A
[1] 1 1 1 1 1
B
[1] 0.6305506 0.6305506 0.6305506 0.6305506 0.6305506 0.6305506 0.6305506

The predicted number of extramarital affairs would be \hat N_{i,j}=E_{i,j}\cdot\hat A_i\cdot \hat B_j

E * A%*%t(B)
        occupation
religion          1          2          3          4          5          6          7
       1  2.5222025  0.6305506  5.0444050  2.5222025 10.0888099  5.6749556  0.0000000
       2 14.5026643  1.8916519  6.9360568 10.7193606 35.3108348 22.6998224  3.7833037
       3 18.2859680  0.6305506  6.3055062  7.5666075 24.5914742 15.7637655  1.2611012
       4 23.9609236  4.4138544  7.5666075 13.2415631 37.2024867 27.7442274  1.2611012
       5  8.1971581  0.6305506  1.8916519  6.3055062 11.9804618 11.9804618  1.8916519
sum(B*E[1,])
[1] 26.48313
sum(B*E[2,])
[1] 95.84369
apply(t(B*t(E)),1,sum)
        1         2         3         4         5 
 26.48313  95.84369  74.40497 115.39076  42.87744 
sum(A*E[,1])
[1] 107
sum(A*E[,2])
[1] 13
apply(A*E,2,sum)
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7 
107  13  44  64 189 133  13

From expressions above, observe that one can very easily write expressions of A_i‘s and B_j‘s as functions of B_j‘s and A_i‘s respectively

A=apply(N,1,sum)/apply(t(B*t(E)),1,sum)
B=apply(N,2,sum)/apply(A*E,2,sum)

Let it iterate one thousand times

for(i in 1:1000){
  A=apply(N,1,sum)/apply(t(B*t(E)),1,sum)
  B=apply(N,2,sum)/apply(A*E,2,sum)
}

We obtain here

A
        1         2         3         4         5 
1.5404346 1.0447195 1.4825650 0.6553159 0.6634763 
B
        1         2         3         4         5         6         7 
0.4685515 0.2629769 0.8454435 0.7245310 0.4889697 0.7770553 1.6753750 
E * A%*%t(B)
        occupation
religion          1          2          3          4          5          6          7
       1  2.8870914  0.4050987 10.4188024  4.4643702 12.0516123 10.7730250  0.0000000
       2 11.2586111  0.8242113  9.7157637 12.8678376 28.6068235 29.2249717 10.5017811
       3 20.1450811  0.3898804 12.5342484 12.8899708 28.2722423 28.8008726  4.9677044
       4 11.6678702  1.2063307  6.6483904  9.9707299 18.9053460 22.4055332  2.1957997
       5  4.0413463  0.1744790  1.6827951  4.8070914  6.1639760  9.7955975  3.3347148

That is our prediction, per category, of the number of affairs. Observe that here, sums per row are equal to observed numbers,

apply(N,1,sum)
  1   2   3   4   5 
 41 103 108  73  30 
apply(E * A%*%t(B),1,sum)
  1   2   3   4   5 
 41 103 108  73  30

as well as sums per colums

apply(N,2,sum)
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7 
 50   3  41  45  94 101  21 
apply(E * A%*%t(B),2,sum)
  1   2   3   4   5   6   7 
 50   3  41  45  94 101  21

Now, why should I mention that here, in the section on the Poisson regression in our course ? Because actually, this is exactly what we get if we run a Poisson regression on those two covariates

reg=glm(y~religion+occupation,data=df,family=poisson)
summary(reg)
Coefficients:
            Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|)    
(Intercept) -0.32604    0.21325  -1.529 0.126285    
religion2   -0.38832    0.18791  -2.066 0.038783 *  
religion3   -0.03829    0.18585  -0.206 0.836771    
religion4   -0.85470    0.19757  -4.326 1.52e-05 ***
religion5   -0.84233    0.24416  -3.450 0.000561 ***
occupation2 -0.57758    0.59549  -0.970 0.332083    
occupation3  0.59022    0.21349   2.765 0.005699 ** 
occupation4  0.43588    0.20603   2.116 0.034381 *  
occupation5  0.04265    0.17590   0.242 0.808399    
occupation6  0.50587    0.17360   2.914 0.003569 ** 
occupation7  1.27415    0.26298   4.845 1.27e-06 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0***0.001**0.01*0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

First of all, observe that the total sum of predictions equals the total sum of observations

yp = predict(reg,type="response")
sum(yp)
[1] 355
sum(df$y)
[1] 355

But actually, the predicted number of affairs, for our 35 classes, is exactly what we got using Bailey’s technique

xtabs(yp~df$religion+df$occupation)
           df$occupation
df$religion          1          2          3          4          5          6          7
          1  2.8870914  0.4050987 10.4188024  4.4643702 12.0516123 10.7730250  0.0000000
          2 11.2586112  0.8242113  9.7157637 12.8678376 28.6068235 29.2249717 10.5017811
          3 20.1450813  0.3898804 12.5342484 12.8899708 28.2722424 28.8008726  4.9677044
          4 11.6678703  1.2063307  6.6483904  9.9707300 18.9053460 22.4055332  2.1957997
          5  4.0413464  0.1744790  1.6827951  4.8070914  6.1639761  9.7955975  3.3347148
E * A%*%t(B)
        occupation
religion          1          2          3          4          5          6          7
       1  2.8870914  0.4050987 10.4188024  4.4643702 12.0516123 10.7730250  0.0000000
       2 11.2586111  0.8242113  9.7157637 12.8678376 28.6068235 29.2249717 10.5017811
       3 20.1450811  0.3898804 12.5342484 12.8899708 28.2722423 28.8008726  4.9677044
       4 11.6678702  1.2063307  6.6483904  9.9707299 18.9053460 22.4055332  2.1957997
       5  4.0413463  0.1744790  1.6827951  4.8070914  6.1639760  9.7955975  3.3347148

To be more specific, up to a multiplicate constant, series of coefficients are equal here, e.g. for A_i‘s

a=exp(coefficients(reg)[1]+c(0,coefficients(reg)[2:5]))
a/a[1]
          religion2 religion3 religion4 religion5 
1.0000000 0.6781979 0.9624329 0.4254098 0.4307072 
A/A[1]
        1         2         3         4         5 
1.0000000 0.6781979 0.9624329 0.4254098 0.4307072

but also for B_j‘s

b=exp(coefficients(reg)[1]+c(0,coefficients(reg)[6:11]))
b/b[1]
            occupation2 occupation3 occupation4 occupation5 occupation6 occupation7 
  1.0000000   0.5612551   1.8043769   1.5463210   1.0435773   1.6584203   3.5756477 
B/B[1]
        1         2         3         4         5         6         7 
1.0000000 0.5612551 1.8043770 1.5463210 1.0435773 1.6584203 3.5756478

This will have major implications in non-life insurance models (for claims reserving).


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Arthur Charpentier (November 22, 2018). Bailey (1963) and Poisson regression on two factors. Freakonometrics. Retrieved April 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ovc8


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