Tag Archives: discrimination

Fairness and discrimination, PhD Course, #7 Sensitive attributes and proxies

In our previous post, we discussed “group fairness“. I might have gone a bit fast, and I decided to add some material about sensistive attributes, and proxies.

Sensitive attributes ?

Almost everywhere, we can find a list of variables that are considered, by law, as sensitive, since they will lead to discrimination. As mentioned earlier, sensitive variable might change with time, and accross regions…

Another issue with black boxes is that it might be hard to assess if they are related to sensitive attribute. In order to extract informations in pictures to classify pictures, or detect pictures, algorithm might use information that could be considered as sensitive. First, recall the popular wolf-husky classifier, that detects snow in the background (since wolf were with snow in the training sample)

This can also be the case for health issues, where classifiers can be influenced by the color of the skin (or possibly some unexpected information)

Racism

The first sensitive attribute is probably the race, that has been discussed in insurance for decaded.

One should keep in mind that race is a social information, and most of the time, it is based on self-identification

This leads to popular maps in the U.S.

Racism is usually related to “colourism” (discrimination based on skin tone)

Is it relevant in the context of insurance, and risk ?

It has been observed that African Americans, in the U.S. were usually asked a higher insurance premium.

Have in mind that discrimination has nothing to do with intention, as mentioned previous. An insurance pricing can be racist, without any intention to be so. An important issue to quantify that problem is actually to observe that variable.

Sexism

Sexism is another popular exemple of discrimination, related to sex, or gender.

Actuaries have been using life tables that are gender related for more than 300 years. And indeed, it seems that women live longer than men.

Ageism

Age is another possible sensitive attribute, but it is more complicated. First, it is not a “club” and second, it is (somehow) clearly related to risk.

In dataset, there can also be selection bias, related to the age. For instance, during the COVID pandemic, triage was based on the age of patients. Treatements and tests can be related to the age of patients. So this bias will probably have an impact on observed risks.

Genetics

Another important sensitive variable is related to “genetic information”.

Such information is usually classified as sensitive everywhere.

To conclude, I wanted to mentioned that several important variables considered as sensitive have not much to do with genetics, but more with a social construction.

Finally, let us discuss proxies that can be related to those sensitive variables.

Names and language

The first one was discussed in the introduction : names contain information about race and ethnical origin,

Text and discussion can also reveal sensitive information.

Pictures

Pictures can also provide information. That was discussed 150 years ago, where researchers tried to identify criminals using solely pictures.

Some insurers have been trying, at some point, to detect diseases on facial pictures. And it possible to reveal informations from pictures. Possibly the age, and the gender.

One can also use satellite pictures, or pictures from Google Street View, such as the wealth in the neighborhood. And possibly sensitive information, such as the presence of an access ramp for disabled people.

Credit Scoring

Credit scoring is also a variable used by insurers, that can be related to variables considered as sensitive

Clearly, a bad credit score will have a big impact not only on mortgages and loans,

but also on insurance rates ! As we explained here, it costs a lot to be poor.

Networks

Finally, insurance can use information related to friends, or family, to assess the risk. And netword data capture a lot of sensitive information.

We will talk a little bit about network, to explain why using your friends risks to assess your own risk might not be a great idea…

It is an extension of th friendship paradox.

Proxies

Finally, we will conclude by showing that removing a sensitive attribute from a training dataset will not mitigate discrimination.

Discrimination by proxy (a real case study)

Yesterday, with Laurence Barry, we posted a blog post “Who benefits from data sharing?” explaining why data sharing, in insurance, could end mutualization. Actually, it can also be bad in the context of discrimination. Consider here the same dataset, with claim occurence, in a real insurance portfolio,

library(InsurFair)
library(randomForest)

Consider a version of this dataset without the gender, and use variable importance to get a list of variables we can use in a predictive model

subfrenchmotor = frenchmotor[,-which(names(frenchmotor)=="sensitive")]
RF = randomForest(y~. ,data=subfrenchmotor)
vi = varImpPlot(RF , sort = TRUE)

We sort variables based on variable importance (the first one is the “most important” one), and add splines for three continuous variables

dfvi = data.frame(nom = names(subfrenchmotor)[-15], g = as.numeric(vi))
dfvi = dfvi[rev(order(dfvi$g)),]
nom = dfvi$nom
nom[1] = "bs(LicAge)"
nom[3] = "bs(DrivAge)"
nom[7] = "bs(BonusMalus)"

Then, the idea is simple : at stage k, we keep the k most important variables, and run a logistic regression on those k variables. Again, I should stress that the gender of the driver is not among those k variables. Then, we compute the average prediction of claim frequency, for mean and women.

n=nrow(subfrenchmotor)
library(splines)
idx_F = which(frenchmotor$sensitive == "Female")
idx_M = which(frenchmotor$sensitive == "Male")
metric_gender= function(k =3){
if(k==0){
reg = glm(y~1, family=binomial, data=subfrenchmotor)
yp = predict(reg, type="response")
yp_F = yp[idx_F]
yp_M = yp[idx_M]
sortie = c(mean(yp_F),mean(yp_M),quantile(yp_F,c(.1,.9)),quantile(yp_M,c(.1,.9)))
names(sortie)[1:2]=c("mean_F","mean_M")
}
if(k>0){
vr = paste(nom[1:k],collapse = " + ")
fm = paste("y ~ ",vr,sep="")
reg = glm(fm, family=binomial, data=subfrenchmotor)
yp = predict(reg, type="response")
yp_F = yp[idx_F]
yp_M = yp[idx_M]
sortie = c(mean(yp_F),mean(yp_M),quantile(yp_F,c(.1,.9)),quantile(yp_M,c(.1,.9)))
names(sortie)[1:2]=c("mean_F","mean_M")
}
sortie}

Let us not compute it for all variables

N = 0:15
M = Vectorize(metric_gender)(N)

and plot it

plot(N,M[1,]*100, xlab="Number of predictive variables (without gender)", ylab=
"Average predicted claims frequency (%)", type="b", pch=19, col=COLORS[2], ylim=c(8.12,9))
lines(N, M[2,]*100, type="b", pch=15, col=COLORS[3])

Interestingly, we can clearly see that with 15 explanatory variables, even if our model is gender-blind (since it is not in the training dataset), our model reproduce the difference we can observe in the dataset : annual claim frequency for men is almost 9% and 8.2% for women.

Actually, it is not possible to predict the gender for our 15 variables (below is the ROC curve of the logistic regression to predict the gender)

metric_gender_2= function(k =3){
if(k==0){
reg = glm((sensitive=="Female")~1, family=binomial, data=frenchmotor)
}
if(k>0){
vr = paste(nom[1:k],collapse = " + ")
fm_genre = paste('(sensitive=="Female") ~ ',vr,sep="")
reg = glm(fm_genre, family=binomial, data=frenchmotor)
}
pred = prediction(predict(reg,type="response"),(frenchmotor$sensitive=="Female"))
performance(pred,"tpr","fpr")}
plot(metric_gender_2(15))

but still, when using 15 variables, we obtain discrimination in our portfolio, since the average predictions for mean and women are significantly difference (even if our models are, per se, gender-blind).

Fairness and discrimination, PhD Course, #3 Machine Learning, losses and distances

For the third course, we will get back a little bit on machine learning (slides are still online on the github repository). The starting point will be loss functions and risk.

Loss functions and risk

A general definition for a loss is that it is positive, and null when we consider \ell(y,y). As we will discuss further, it is neither a distance, nor a dissimilarity measure

Then, define the empirical risk (and the associated empirical risk minimization principle, as coined in Vapnik (1991))

Given a loss \ell and some probabilistic space, define the optimal decision, also called Bayes decision rule

And instead of the risk of a model, define the excess of risk.

A classical loss for a classifier is \ell_{0/1},

In that case, Bayes decision rule, ism^\star(\boldsymbol{x}) = \boldsymbol{1}(\mu(\boldsymbol{x})>1/2) =\begin{cases}1 \text{ if }\mu(\boldsymbol{x})>1/2\\0 \text{ if }\mu(\boldsymbol{x})\leq1/2\\\end{cases}where (of course), one needs to know \mu, otherwise, we can consider some plug-in estimator based on \widehat\mu. For continuous variables y, consider the quadratic loss \ell_2,

In that case, Bayes decision rule (the optimal model) is the conditional expectation

Observe that we can also define the quantile loss (or the expectile loss)

Observe that this loss is not symmetric..

From loss functions to distances

Let us discuss a bit more the fact that losses are not distances. As mentioned, it is neither necessarily symmetric nor seperable,

But furthermore, it has no reason to satisfy the triangle inequality. Actually, if d is the distance, it is very likely that d^2 is not (since exponentiating is not a subadditive transformation)

Another related concept could be the concept of similarity, or dissimilarity.

Another one is the concept of divergence, that we will use much more. For instance, Bregman divergence is

which safisfies desirables properties.

Interestingly it is possible to define “projections” even if we have neither an orthogonal projection (since there is no orthogonal concept since there is no inner-product), nor a distance. But still

One can use a nice algorithm to estimate that quantity, if the convex set can we expressed simply

When considering “distances” between distributions, instead of y‘s, among other interesting properties in statistics, we can mention the one of unbiased gradients,

and Müller (1997) defined integral probability metrics

Standard “distances” between distributions

The first one will be Hellinger distance

that can lead so simple expressions for standard parametric distributions, such as Beta distributions,

or (multivariate) Gaussian ones

We can also mention Pearson divergence

More interesting (and popular in probability theory), total variation

There are several ways to express that distance.

If instead of general sets \mathcal{A}, we can consider half lines, (-\infty,t][\latex], and we obtain Kolmogorov distance (or Kolmogorov-Smirnov)

Another important one in statistics is Kullback–Leibler divergence

For instance, with Gaussian vectors

Observe that the measure is actually a dissimilarity measure

If we want a symmetric version, we can consider Jeffreys divergence

or Jensen–Shannon divergence

Finally, we will mention f-divergence

and Rényi divergence

We will discuss a little bit more those "distances" (yes, I usually use that term, abusively) and next week, we will present the most interesting distance, that will be Wasserstein's.

Fairness and discrimination, PhD Course, #2 Insurance and risk classes

For the second course, we will get back a little bit on insurance pricing in a context of heterogeneous portfolio, and risk classification (slides are still online on the github repository). The starting point will be the pure premium.

See our online textbook, with Michel Denuit, Non Life Insurance Mathematics, for additional motivation. If we have some risk related variables \boldsymbol{x}=(x_1,\cdots,x_k), the pure premium will be the conditional expectation,

Here also, we have some law of numbers, for the conditional expected value,

This relationship, which defines the conditional expected value using the limiting value of a conditional frequency cannot be used to define properly \mathbb{P}[Y|\boldsymbol{X}=\boldsymbol{x}] and \mathbb{E}[Y|\boldsymbol{X}=\boldsymbol{x}]. One can consider a limit,\mathbb{P}\big(Y\in \mathcal{A}\big\vert X = x\big)=\lim_{\epsilon\to0}\frac{\mathbb{P}(\{Y\in \mathcal{A}\}\cap\{|X -x|\leq \epsilon\})}{\mathbb{P}(\{|X -x|\leq \epsilon\})}or\mathbb{P}\big(Y\in \mathcal{A}\big\vert X = x\big)=\lim_{\epsilon\to0}\mathbb{P}\big(Y\in \mathcal{A}\big\vert |X -x|\leq \epsilon\big)as in the law of the unconscious statistician or as Proschan and Presnell (1998) wrote it

statisticians make liberal use of conditioning arguments to shorten what would otherwise be long proofs

We can now compute conditional frequency, given some risk characteristics, for some quantity of interest y, such as the age of death, in life insurance contracts.

Demographic risk and heterogeneity

First, we will see some gender-based life tables, starting with the one obtained by Nicolaas Struyck (see e.g. Alberts et al. (2014))

More recently, in France, some wealth based life tables were obtained, with various quantiles

And finally, we will see some life tables obtained 50 years ago in the US, with racial distinction

Mean and variance decomposition

About pure premiums, an important property is the law of total expectations, and a desirable property, that we will name “balance property”

We will also mention variance and variance decomposition, depending if we take into heterogeneity, or not. With homogenous pricing, we have

If we use the “true” underlying risk factor, \Theta, we have the standard variance decomposition, also called law of total variance

i.e.

And finally, if we do not observe \Theta, but we have a collection of covariates, \boldsymbol{X}=(X_1,\cdots,X_k),

Some historical perspectives

In the textbook, Insurance: Biases, Discrimination and Fairness, I have several paragraph about an historical perspective, starting with insurance as clubs, without segmentation. Then segmentation started, with risk classes and groups. For example, according to Issues And Needed Improvements In State Regulation Of The Insurance Business, by Harry Havens, in 1979,

The price which a person pays for automobile insurance depends on age, sex, marital status, place of residence and other factors. This risk classification system produces widely differing prices for the same coverage for different people. Questions have been raised about the fairness of this system, and especially about its reliability as a predictor of risk for a particular individual. While we have not tried to judge the propriety of these groupings, and the resulting price differences, we believe that the questions about them warrant careful consideration by the State insurance departments. In most States the authority to examine classification plans is based on the requirement that insurance rates are neither inadequate, excessive, nor unfairly discriminatory. The only criterion for approving classifications in most States is that the classifications be statistically justified — that is, that they reasonably reflect loss experience. Relative rates with respect to age, sex, and marital status are based on the analysis of national data. A youthful male driver, for example, is charged twice as much as an older driver all over the country} (…) t has also been claimed that insurance companies engage in redlining – the arbitrary denial of insurance to everyone living in a particular neighborhood. Community groups and others have complained that State regulators have not been diligent in preventing redlining and other forms of improper discrimination that make insurance unavailable in certain areas. In addition to outright refusals to insure, geographic discrimination can include such practices as: selective placement of agents to reduce business in some areas, terminating agents and not renewing their book of business, pricing insurance at un-affordable levels, and instructing agents to avoid certain areas. We reviewed what the State insurance departments were doing in response to these problem. To determine if redlining exists, it is necessary to collect data on a geographic oasis. Such data should include current insurance policies, new policies being written, cancellations, and non-renewals. It is also important to examine data on losses by neighborhoods within existing rating territories because marked discrepancies within territories would cast doubt on the validity of territorial boundaries. Yet, not even a fifth of the States collect anything other than loss data, and that data is gathered on a territory-wide basis.

According to The Role of Risk Classification in Property and Casualty Insurance: A Study of the Risk Assessment Process : Final Report, by Barbara Casey, Jacques Pezier and Carl Spetzler, in 1976,

On the other hand, the opinion that distinctions based on sex, or any other group variable, necessarily violate individual rights reflects ignorance of the basic rules of logical inference in that it would arbitrarily forbid the use of relevant information. It would be equally fallacious to reject a classification system based on socially acceptable variables because the results appear discriminatory. For example, a classification system may be built on use of car, mileage, merit rating, and other variables, excluding sex. However, when verifying the average rates according to sex one may discover significant differences between males and females. Refusing to allow such differences would be attempting to distort reality by choosing to be selectively blind. The use of rating territories is a case in point. Geographical divisions, however designed, are often correlated with socio-demographic factors such as income level and race because of natural aggregation or forced segregation according to these factors. Again we conclude that insurance companies should be free to delineate territories and assess territorial differences as well as they can. At the same time, insurance companies should recognize that it is in their best interest to be objective and use clearly relevant factors to define territories lest they be accused of invidious discrimination by the public. (…) One possible standard does exist for exception to the counsel that particular rating variables should not be proscribed. What we have called `equal treatment’ standard of fairness may precipitate a societal decision that the process of differentiating among individuals on the basis of certain variables is discriminatory and intolerable. This type of decision should be made on a specific, statutory basis. Once taken, it must be adhered to in private and public transactions alike and enforced by the insurance regulator. This is, in effect, a standard for conduct that by design transcends and preempts economic considerations. Because it is not applied without economic cost, however, insurance regulators and the industry should participate in and inform legislative deliberations that would ban the, use of particular rating variables as discriminatory.

And then, more recently, we started to talk about personalization, as in Barry and Charpentier (2020). And next week, we will start talking about predictive modeling, and machine learning.

Fairness and discrimination, PhD Course, #1 Motivation

This week, we will start our MAT998P course, in Montréal, entitled “équité et discrimination des modèles prédictifs“. It will mainly be based on the forthcoming textbook,

I can also mention the R package

> library(devtools)
> install_github("freakonometrics/InsurFair")

And because it is the first course, this week, I will start with some motivations this week… First of all, let me recall a definition, from Schauer (2006)

To be an actuary is to be a specialist in generalization, and actuaries engage in a form of decision making that is sometimes called actuarial. Actuaries guide insurance companies in making decisions about large categories that have the effect of attributing to the entire category certain characteristics that are probabilistically indicated by membership in the category, but that still may not be possessed by a particular member of the category.

Motivation #1 Redlining

In 1937, the HOLC (Home Owners’ Loan Corporation) produced the following map of Philadelphia, related to “residential security”

These maps were related to concept of “redlining”. According to Merriam Webster dictionary,

to redline is (1) to withhold home-loan funds or insurance from neighborhoods considered poor economic risks; (2) to discriminate against in housing or insurance.

On the (fictitious) maps below, we have three variables, ploted

  • some red and green areas (risky-non risky)
  • some unsanitary index (on a 0-100 scale)
  • the proportion of Black inhabitants per neiborhood

In an insurance context, risky areas (with a higher premium) should be correlated with unsanitarity index (or any risk-related variable), and those variables are legitimate predictive variables. But they can also be related to less-legitimate variable, that could be racial, here. The challenge here is that a lot of variables are correlated…

I could mention here that, for  Glenn (2000), insurer’s risk selection process has two sides:

  • the one presented to regulators and policyholders (numbers, statistics and objectivity),
  •  the other presented to underwriters (stories, character and subjective judgment).

The rhetoric of insurance exclusion – numbers, objectivity and statistics – forms what Brian Glenn calls

the myth of the actuary (…) a powerful rhetorical situation in which decisions appear to be based on objectively determined criteria when they are also largely based on subjective ones (…) or the subjective nature of a seemingly objective process.

Glenn  (2003) claimed that there are many ways to rate accurately. Insurers can rate risks in many different ways depending on the stories they tell on which characteristics are important and which are not.

The fact that the selection of risk factors is subjective and contingent upon narratives of risk and responsibility has in the past played a far larger role than whether or not someone with a wood stove is charged higher premiums (…) virtually every aspect of the insurance industry is predicated on stories first and then numbers

Motivation #2. “Gender directive”, 2004/113/EC

From the Treaty on European Union (26.10.2012)

Art. 2 The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.

Art. 3 (…) It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.

from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (18.12.2000)

Art. 21 (Non discrimination): Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

Art. 23 (Equality between men and women) Equality between men and women must be ensured in all areas, including employment, work and pay. The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex.

and from the EU Directive 2004/113/EC (2004 version)

Art. 5 (Actuarial factors)

1. Member States shall ensure that in all new contracts concluded after 21 December 2007 at the latest, the use of sex as a factor in the calculation of premiums and benefits for the purposes of insurance and related financial services shall not result in differences in individuals’ premiums and benefits.

2. Notwithstanding paragraph 1, Member States may decide before 21 December 2007 to permit proportionate differences in individuals’ premiums and benefits where the use of sex is a determining factor in the assessment of risk based on relevant and accurate actuarial and statistical data. The Member States concerned shall inform the Commission and ensure that accurate data relevant to the use of sex as a determining actuarial factor are compiled, published and regularly updated.

There was initially (2004) an opt-out clause (Article 5(2)), since, where gender is a determining factor in the assessment of
risk based on relevant and accurate actuarial and statistical
data then proportionate differences in individual premiums or
benefits are allowed.

In March 2011, the European Court of Justice issued its judgement into the “Test-Achats case”. The ECJ ruled Article 5(2) was invalid. Thus, insurers were no longer able to use gender as a risk factor when pricing policies.

Other legal documents in Europe can be mentioned such that the “Ten Oever” judgement (Gerardus Cornelis Ten Oever v Stichting Bedrijfspensioenfonds voor het Glazenwassers — en Schoonmaakbedrijf). In April 1993, the Advocate General Vangerven argued that (see De Baere (2012))

the fact that women generally live longer than men has no significance at all for the life expectancy of a specific individual and it is not acceptable for an individual to be penalized on account of assumptions which are not certain to be true in his specific case,

which could be related to the concept of “injustice by generalization”.

Motivation #3. Colorado (September 27, 2023)

In September 27, 2023, the Colorado Division of Insurance exposed a new proposed regulation entitled Concerning Quantitative Testing of External Consumer Data and Information Sources, Algorithms, and Predictive Models Used for Life Insurance Underwriting for Unfairly Discriminatory Outcomes.

Section 4 (Definitions) Bayesian Improved First Name Surname Geocoding, or “BIFSG” means, for the purposes of this regulation, the statistical methodology developed by the RAND corporation for estimating race and ethnicity.

External Consumer Data and Information Source, or “ECDIS” means, for the purposes of this regulation, a data source or an information source that is used by a life insurer to supplement or supplant traditional underwriting factors. This term includes credit scores, credit history, social media habits, purchasing habits, home ownership, educational attainment, licensures, civil judgments, court records, occupation that does not have a direct relationship to mortality, morbidity or longevity risk, consumer-generated Internet of Things data, biometric data, and any insurance risk scores derived by the insurer or third-party from the above listed or similar data and/or information source.

Then we have different sections, where insurers are asked to “estimate” the race or ethnicity of policyholders

Section 5 (Estimating Race and Ethnicity) : Insurers shall estimate the race or ethnicity of all proposed insureds that have applied for coverage on or after the insurer’s initial adoption of the use of ECDIS, or algorithms and predictive models that use ECDIS, including a third party acting on behalf of the insurer that used ECDIS, or algorithms and predictive models that used ECDIS, in the underwriting decision-making process, by utilizing:

1. BIFSG and the insureds’ or proposed insureds’ name and geolocation information included in the applications) for life insurance shall be used to estimate the race and ethnicity of each insured or proposed insured.

2. For the purposes of BIFSG, the following racial and ethnic categories shall be used: Hispanic, Black, Asian Pacific Islander (API), and White.

Section 6 (Application Approval Decision Testing Requirements) : Using the BIFSG estimated race and ethnicity of proposed insureds and the following methodology, insurers shall calculate whether Hispanic, Black, and API proposed insureds are disapproved at a statistically significant different rate relative to White applicants for whom the insurer, or a third party acting on behalf of the insurer, used ECDIS, or an algorithm or predictive model that used ECDIS, in the underwriting decision-making process.

1. Logistic regression shall be used to model the binary underwriting outcome of either approved or denied.

2. The following factors may be accounted for as control variables in the regression model: policy type, face amount, age, gender, and tobacco use.

3. The estimated race or ethnicity of the proposed insureds shall be accounted for by including Hispanic, Black, and Asian Pacific Islander (API) as separate dummy variables in the regression model.

4. Determine if there is a statistically significant difference in approval rates for each BIFSG estimated race or ethnicity variable as indicated by a p-value of less than .05.

a. If there is not a statistically significant difference in approval rates, no further testing is required.

b. If there is a statistically significant difference in approval rates, the insurer shall determine whether the difference in approval rates is five (5) percentage points or greater as indicated by the marginal effects value of each BIFSG estimated race or ethnicity variable. (…)

or

Section 7 (Premium Rate Testing Requirements) : Using the insureds’ BIFSG estimated race and ethnicity, insurers shall determine if there is a statistically significant difference in the premium rate per $1,000 of face amount for policies issued to Hispanic, Black, and API insureds relative to White insureds for whom the insurer, or a third party acting on behalf of the insurer, used ECDIS, or an algorithm or predictive model that used ECDIS, in the underwriting decision-making process.

1. Linear regression shall be used to model the continuous numerical outcome of premium rate per $1,000 of face amount.

2. The following factors may be accounted for as control variables in the regression model: policy type, face amount, age, gender, and tobacco use.

3. The estimated race or ethnicity of the proposed insureds shall be accounted for by including Hispanic, Black, and Asian Pacific  Islander (API) as separate dummy variables in the regression model.

4. Determine if there is a statistically significant difference in the premium rate per $1,000 of face amount for each BIFSG estimated race or ethnicity variable as indicated by a p-value of less than .05.

a. If there is not a statistically significant difference in premium rate per $1,000 of face amount, no further testing is required.

b. If there is a statistically significant difference in premium rate per $1,000 of face amount, determine whether the premium rate per $1,000 of face amount is at least 5% more than the average premium rate per $1,000 for all policies.

i. If the difference in premium rate per $1,000 of face amount is less than 5%, no further testing is required.

ii. If the difference in premium rate per $1,000 of face amount is 5% or greater, further testing is required as described in Section 8.

(etc). In order to illustrate, we can use some data, in the region of Atlanta

 

We can change the first and last name of people (and keep other relevant information, including the ZIP code) and compare “predictions” of race (white, black, hispanic, asian, etc)

Motivation #4. Motor Insurance in the U.S.

In the context of motor insurance in the U.S., recall that legal restrictions are per states, and we can observe some diversity about what “sensitive” could mean (via thezebra)

(etc). We will also discuss Avraham et al. (2013) that provides a long discussion accross US states.

Motivation #5. Graduate Admission (UC Berkeley)

Another motivation is the popular article, Bickel,  Hammel, and O’Connell (1975)

The dataset mentioned in the article is the following

the bias in the aggregated data stems not from any pattern of discrimination on the part of admissions committees, which seems quite fair on the whole, but apparently from prior screening at earlier levels of the educational system. Women are shunted by their socialization and education toward fields of graduate study that are generally more crowded, less productive of completed degrees, and less well funded, and that frequently offer poorer professional employment prospects

As we can see, if we formalize, we have (almost)

This is Simpson’s paradox. Another simple example is related to mortality : the (overall) mortality rate for women (picked at random in the entiere population) was 0.812% in Costa Rica, lower than 0.929% in Sweden. But as we can see on the left, below, at any age, mortality rates are lower in Sweden than in Costa Rica.

The paradox can easily be explained if we look at age structures in both countries. Long story short, in Costa Rica, picking someone randomly means that the person is very likely to be (very) young, with a low mortality rate; in Sweden, the person is more likely to be older, with a higher mortality rate.

Motivation #6. Propublica, Actuarial Justice

We will also mention actuarial justice, and et al (2016)

Hence, looking at the same data, with difference perspective, could lead to different conclusions. More robust conclusions can be obtained when look at distributions of scores (instead of simple binary predictions)

and we can also consider temporal process (again, instead of simply binary variables, with temporal censoring)

Motivation #7. Insurance in Québec

Two final motivations, in French this time. In Québec, there is the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne (C-12) with some very clear definition of what “discrimination” means,

Art. 10  Toute personne a droit à la reconnaissance et à l’exercice, en pleine égalité, des droits et libertés de la personne, sans distinction, exclusion ou préférence fondée sur la race, la couleur, le sexe, l’identité ou l’expression de genre, la grossesse, l’orientation sexuelle, l’état civil, l’âge sauf dans la mesure prévue par la loi, la religion, les convictions politiques, la langue, l’origine ethnique ou nationale, la condition sociale, le handicap ou l’utilisation d’un moyen pour pallier ce handicap.

Il y a discrimination lorsqu’une telle distinction, exclusion ou préférence a pour effet de détruire ou de compromettre ce droit.

But, interestingly, insurers can almost do anything they want,

Art 20.1 Dans un contrat d’assurance ou de rente, un régime d’avantages sociaux, de retraite, de rentes ou d’assurance ou un régime universel de rentes ou d’assurance, une distinction, exclusion ou préférence fondée sur l’âge, le sexe ou l’état civil est réputée non discriminatoire lorsque son utilisation est légitime et que le motif qui la fonde constitue un facteur de détermination de risque, basé sur des données actuarielles.

Motivation #8. Intention

And finally, I can mention that in many countries (such as France), “indirect discrimination” is considered as discriminatory, so “intention” has nothing to do with the problem… The Loi no 2008-496 du 27 mai 2008 states that

Art. 1 Constitue une discrimination indirecte une disposition, un critère ou une pratique neutre en apparence, mais susceptible d’entraîner, pour l’un des motifs mentionnés au premier alinéa, un désavantage particulier pour des personnes par rapport à d’autres personnes, à moins que cette disposition, ce critère ou cette pratique ne soit objectivement justifié par un but légitime et que les moyens pour réaliser ce but ne soient nécessaires et appropriés.

This law is an extension of Loi no. 72-546 du 1er juillet 1972, which abolished the requirement for specific intent.

Again, following Avraham (2017), keep in mind that insurance is very specific, regarding discrimination

What is unique about insurance is that even statistical discrimination which by definition is absent of any malicious intentions, poses significant moral and legal challenges. Why? Because on the one hand, policy makers would like insurers to treat their insureds equally, without discriminating based on race, gender, age, or other characteristics, even if it makes statistical sense to discriminate (…) On the other hand, at the core of insurance business lies discrimination between risky and non-risky insureds. But riskiness often statistically correlates with the same characteristics policy makers would like to prohibit insurers from taking into account.

That will be the topic of the course…

Measuring and Mitigating Biases in Motor Insurance Pricing

Our paper, Measuring and Mitigating Biases in Motor Insurance Pricing, with Mulah Moriah and Franck Vermet, is now available on Arxiv.

The non-life insurance sector operates within a highly competitive and tightly regulated framework, confronting a pivotal juncture in the formulation of pricing strategies. Insurers are compelled to harness a range of statistical methodologies and available data to construct optimal pricing structures that align with the overarching corporate strategy while accommodating the dynamics of market competition. Given the fundamental societal role played by insurance, premium rates are subject to rigorous scrutiny by regulatory authorities. These rates must conform to principles of transparency, explainability, and ethical considerations. Consequently, the act of pricing transcends mere statistical calculations and carries the weight of strategic and societal factors. These multifaceted concerns may drive insurers to establish equitable premiums, taking into account various variables. For instance, regulations mandate the provision of equitable premiums, considering factors such as policyholder gender or mutualist group dynamics in accordance with respective corporate strategies. Age-based premium fairness is also mandated. In certain insurance domains, variables such as the presence of serious illnesses or disabilities are emerging as new dimensions for evaluating fairness. Regardless of the motivating factor prompting an insurer to adopt fairer pricing strategies for a specific variable, the insurer must possess the capability to define, measure, and ultimately mitigate any ethical biases inherent in its pricing practices while upholding standards of consistency and performance. This study seeks to provide a comprehensive set of tools for these endeavors and assess their effectiveness through practical application in the context of automobile insurance.

Présentation sur l’équité et la discrimination en assurance, pour Intact

Demain matin, avec Olivier et Marie-Pier Côté, on sera chez l’assureur Intact pour parler équité et discrimination. Olivier présentera ses travaux récents sur l’utilisation de modèles causaux pour proposer des modèles “équitables” en assurance. Le papier (a fair price to pay: exploiting directed acyclic graphs for fairness in insurance) sera bientôt disponible !

Insurance, biases, discrimination and fairness, v2

In the Summer 2022, my report Insurance, biaises, discrimination and fairness (v1) was officially uploaded on the website of the Institut Louis Bachelier. I have spent another year to add illustrations and examples, and I sent the manuscript to the publisher at the beginning of the Summer 2023. Because of delays, the book is not out yet, but the publisher allowed me to upload Insurance, biaises, discrimination and fairness v2 of the document. Note that it will be the lecture notes of the doctoral course I will give this Winter at ENSAE, in Paris, France.

The R functions (and package) will be uploaded on https://github.com/freakonometrics/InsurFair soon.

A Sequentially Fair Mechanism for Multiple Sensitive Attributes

Our paper, A Sequentially Fair Mechanism for Multiple Sensitive Attributes, with François Hu and Philipp Ratz, is now available on Arxiv,

In the standard use case of Algorithmic Fairness, the goal is to eliminate the relationship between a sensitive variable and a corresponding score. Throughout recent years, the scientific community has developed a host of definitions and tools to solve this task, which work well in many practical applications. However, the applicability and effectivity of these tools and definitions becomes less straightfoward in the case of multiple sensitive attributes. To tackle this issue, we propose a sequential framework, which allows to progressively achieve fairness across a set of sensitive features. We accomplish this by leveraging multi-marginal Wasserstein barycenters, which extends the standard notion of Strong Demographic Parity to the case with multiple sensitive characteristics. This method also provides a closed-form solution for the optimal, sequentially fair predictor, permitting a clear interpretation of inter-sensitive feature correlations. Our approach seamlessly extends to approximate fairness, enveloping a framework accommodating the trade-off between risk and unfairness. This extension permits a targeted prioritization of fairness improvements for a specific attribute within a set of sensitive attributes, allowing for a case specific adaptation. A data-driven estimation procedure for the derived solution is developed, and comprehensive numerical experiments are conducted on both synthetic and real datasets. Our empirical findings decisively underscore the practical efficacy of our post-processing approach in fostering fair decision-making.

Actuarial Science Workshop on 2023 SSC Meeting in Ottawa

This Sunday, I will be presenting at the Actuarial Science Workshop, a 2023 SSC (Statistical Society of Canada) Annual Meeting in Ottawa. It is organized by Jun Cai (Waterloo), Ben Feng (Waterloo), Emiliano Valdez (University of Connecticut) and Xiaofei Shi (UofT) will also be there. It will be on optimal transport, in the context of fairness and discrimination, in insurance. Slides are now available.

Is there discrimination against the poor?

(With Laurence Barry, we wrote a short article on discrimination against the poor, in French)

In 2013, Martin Hirsch (former director of Emmaüs and Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris) stated “it’s getting expensive to be poor”. This reality was confirmed by a recent study, in France, by the Banque Postale*, which showed that on average, a poor household has to pay 1,500 euros more each year to access the same goods and services as a better-off household, introducing a “double poverty penalty**”. Unfortunately, insurance is not left out: the use of credit scores in many countries reinforces what could be a form of discrimination against the poor. In the United States, where the practice is more common than elsewhere, a commission of inquiry recently tried to explain the link between credit score and claims frequency: is it because, as some insurers argue, people with lower scores are also less careful than others? Or is it because, having less financial means than others, they more naturally ask to be compensated for the losses incurred? And, in this second case, are we not also making them pay twice for their condition?

From excellence to wealth as a virtue

On what criteria do we admire people? For the Greeks, excellence, or arête (ἀρετή), was a major virtue. This excellence went beyond moral excellence: in the Greco-Roman world, the term evoked a form of nobility, recognizable by the beauty, strength, courage, or intelligence of the person. Now this excellence had little to do with wealth: thus Herodotus is astonished that the winners of the Olympian games were content with an olive wreath and a “glorious renown,” peri-bones (περὶ ἀρετῆς). In the Greek ethical vision, especially among the Stoics, a “good life” does not depend on material wealth – a precept pushed to its height by Diogenes who, seeing a child drinking from his hands at the fountain, throws away the bowl he had for all crockery, telling himself that it is again useless wealth.

Greek society is nevertheless a deeply hierarchical society, even if it is organized around values other than material wealth. We can then ask ourselves at what point in Western history wealth became the measure of all things. One thinks then of Max Weber’s theory: the ethics of Protestantism pushes for work and earthly success as a revelation of a divine election to come: the rich of this world would be the chosen of the next. In the same way Adam Smith, taking a critical look at the birth of capitalism in the society of his time, titles a chapter of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) “Of the corruption of our moral feelings occasioned by that disposition to admire the rich and great, and to despise or neglect the poor and lowly.”

Today, the cult of wealth seems to have never been so strong and material success is almost elevated to the rank of virtue. On the other hand, poverty becomes a stigma that is hard to get rid of; but history shows us that this is not natural.

From “good” to “bad” poor

Indeed, the poor have not always been “bad”. As Fulconis & Kikuchi (2017) remind us, the Church has largely contributed to disseminating the image of the “good poor”, as it appears in the Gospels: “happy are you poor, the kingdom of God is yours”; or “God could have made all men rich, but he wanted there to be poor people in this world, so that the rich would have an opportunity to redeem their sins”. Beyond this, the poor is seen as an image of Christ, Jesus having said “whatever you do to the least of these, you will do to me”. Helping the poor, doing a work of mercy, is a means of salvation.

For Saint Thomas Aquinas, charity is thus essential to correct social inequalities by redistributing wealth through almsgiving***. In the Middle Ages, merchants were seen as useful, even virtuous, since they allowed wealth to circulate within the community. Priests played the role of social assistants, helping the sick, the elderly and the disabled. The hospices and xenodochia of the Middle Ages (ξενοδοχεῖον, that “place for strangers,” ξένος) are the symbol of this care of the poor. And quite often, poverty is not limited to material capital, but also social and cultural, to use a more contemporary terminology.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the figure of the “bad poor”, the parasitic and dangerous vagabond, appeared. In line with Weber, Todeschini (2021) insists on the increasing value attached to work and social “usefulness”. Brant (1494), the first, begins to denounce these welfare recipients, “some become beggars at an age when, young and strong, and in full health, one could work: why bother”. For Fulconis & Kikichi (2017), this mistrust is reinforced with the great pandemic of the Black Death. Colombi (2020) returns to this turning point, at the end of the Middle Ages, when in the cities, the bourgeois closed their districts with chains, to avoid that “poor and foreigners” settle there. The hygienic theories of the end of the 19th century added the final touch: if fevers and diseases were caused by insalubrity and poor living conditions, then by keeping the poor out, they were protected from disease.

Poor… by choice?

In the words of Mollat (2006) “the poor are those who, permanently or temporarily, find themselves in a situation of weakness, dependence, humiliation, characterized by the deprivation of means, variable according to the times and the societies, of power and social consideration”. Recently, Cortina (2022) proposed the term “aporophobia”, or “pauvrophobia”, to describe a whole set of prejudices that exist towards the poor. The unemployed are said to be welfare recipients and lazy, says Lamy; it is also the famous “where there is a will there is a way”, (which can be found in contemporary expressions such as “those who don’t want to do anything, those who don’t want to work” or “I’ll cross the street and find you a job”). And as is often the case, these prejudices, which stigmatize a group, “the poor”, lead to fear or hatred, generating an important cleavage, and finally a form of discrimination. Cortina’s (2022) “pauvrophobia” is a discrimination against social precariousness, which would be almost more important than “usual” forms of discrimination, such as racism or xenophobia. Cortina ironically notes that rich foreigners are often not rejected.

But these prejudices also turn into accusations. Szalavitz (2017) thus abruptly asks the question, “Why do we think poor people are poor because of their own bad choices?”. The “actor-observer” bias provides one element of an answer: we often think that it is circumstances, which constrain our own choices, but that it is the behavior of others that changes theirs. In other words, others are poor because they made bad choices, but if I am poor, it is because of an unfair system. This bias is also valid for the rich: winners often tend to believe that they got where they are by their own hard work, and that they therefore deserve what they have.

Social science studies show, however, that the poor are rarely poor by choice, and increasing inequality and geographic segregation do not help. The lack of empathy then leads to more polarization, more rejection and, in a vicious circle, even less empathy.

Links between wealth and risk(s)

To discriminate is to distinguish (exclude or prefer) a person because of his/her “personal characteristics”. Can we then speak of discrimination against the poor? Is poverty (like gender or skin color) a personal characteristic? In Quebec, “social condition” (which explicitly includes poverty) is one of the protected variables and therefore prohibited discrimination. This is not the case in France. As Barry & Charpentier (2021) remind us, when actuaries calculate a premium, discrimination directly linked to risk, and provided that the variable is not protected, is generally seen as legitimate. However, it is well known that wealth or social status has a lot to do with risk, whatever it may be. At the global level, Denis Hatzfeld reminds us that “earthquakes are much more deadly in poor countries than in developed countries, which have gradually learned to protect themselves from them. Similarly, Le Hir (2010) states that “A schoolboy is 400 times more likely to die in an earthquake in Kathmandu than in Tokyo”.

This is true for most risks. In France, we find in the deaths due to road accidents 3% of executives and 15% of workers, while they represent nearly 20% of the working population each, according to ONISR (2022). Blanpain (2018) points out that the gap in life expectancy at birth is 13 years between the most affluent and the most modest men. Recently, Allain (2022) noted that the most modest French people, at comparable age and sex, had almost three times more diabetes, twice as much liver or pancreatic disease, 1.6 times more chronic respiratory disease, etc. than the average. Cambois, Laborde and Robine (2008) similarly noted that the number of years of disability for blue-collar workers is also much higher, over a shorter life span on average.

The use of credit scores in insurance

In North America, companies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion keep records of the borrowing and repayment activities of all individuals with bank accounts. FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation) offers a formula to convert these records into a score, the credit score. This score is a function of debt and available credit, income and its variations, and history of incidents, bankruptcies or simple delinquencies. It is often seen as an assessment of a person’s creditworthiness, or the likelihood that he or she will repay debts. It is by nature closely related to income (Crowe 2022), making the credit score a robust proxy for wealth. Fourcade and Healy (2013) show that, as a good credit score has become a necessary condition for obtaining credit and maintaining purchasing power, this system has come to create an impenetrable wall between advantaged and disadvantaged classes. In a sense, a bad credit score becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: people with a bad score (and therefore considered high risk by banks) become dependent on short-term alternatives. This increases the costs of future financing, thus the probability of default (François 2021) but also the probability of not finding a job (this score can be requested by employers****). “Using credit scores to punish the poor exacerbates existing socioeconomic inequalities,” Wang (2018) thus aptly asserts.

As an example, Table 1 compares a few parameters based on people’s credit scores, including the rate obtained for a $150,000 loan over a 30-year horizon, and the average insurance premium charged for car insurance (for a 30-year-old driver, driving 20,000km per year, in the city).

Table 1: Actual price of a $150,000 loan and the amount of a car insurance premium (for comparable coverage and risk profile), based on credit score (ranging from 300 to 850). Source: InCharge Debt Solutions.

Kiviat (2019) has extensively studied the use of credit scores in the pricing of auto insurance in the United States. The US regulator has indeed looked at the proven link between bad credit score and auto risk. What explanation can be given for this correlation? Wouldn’t the score be an indicator of poverty and not a proxy for the driver’s prudence as insurers claim? For if social condition is not a protected variable as it is in Canada, it is still largely associated with skin color, which is a prohibited variable. Discriminating on the basis of credit score could therefore amount to prohibited racial discrimination. By examining the debates around these issues, Kiviat highlights the ethical complexity of using facially neutral variables. And if, as noted above, poor living conditions increase risk in general, it is worth asking whether insurance is not helping to apply the double whammy that Martin Hirsch spoke of to the poor.

References

Allain, S. (2022). Les maladies chroniques touchent plus souvent les personnes modestes et réduisent davantage leur espérance de vie. DREES, 1243
Blanpain, N. (2018). L’espérance de vie par niveau de vie : chez les hommes, 13 ans d’écart entre les plus aisés et les plus modestes. Insee, Insee Première, 1687.
Bourdelais, P. (2001) Les hygiénistes: enjeux, modèles et pratiques. Éditions Belin.
Brant, S. (1494). La Nef des fous (Das Narrenschiff).
Cambois, E., Laborde, C & Robine, J.M. (2008). La “double peine” des ouvriers : plus d’années d’incapacité au sein d’une vie plus courte. Population & Sociétés, n° 441.
Caplovitz, D. (1963). Poor pay more; consumer practices of low-income families. Free Press.
Colombi, D., (2020). Où va l’argent des pauvres. Payot.
Cortina, A. (2022). Aporophobia: Why We Reject the Poor Instead of Helping Them. Princeton University Press.
Crowe, A. (2022). The Relationship Between Income and Credit Score. Credit Sesame Personal Finance and Credit Survey,
Fourcade, M. & Healy, K. (2013). Classification situations: Life-chances in the neoliberal era, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 38 (8): 559–572
François, P. (2021). Catégorisation, individualisation. Retour sur les scores de crédit. Chaire PARI, WP #24.
Fulconis, M. & Kikuchi, C. (2017) Vu du Moyen Âge : du « bon pauvre » au « mauvais pauvre ». The Conversation.
Grossetête, M. (2012) Accidents de la route et inégalités sociales. Les morts, les médias et l’État, Éditions du Croquant.
Kiviat, B. (2019). The moral limits of predictive practices: The case of credit-based insurance scores. American Sociological Review, 84(6), 1134-1158.
Lamy, T. (2022) Assistés, paresseux… pour 50% des Français, les chômeurs sont responsables de leur situation. Capital, décembre 2022
Lauer,J. (2017) Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America, Columbia University Press.
Le Hir, P. (2010). Catastrophes et pauvreté, la double peine. Le Monde, 22 janvier,
Merton, R. (1968). The Matthew effect in science, Science, vol. CLIX, n° 3810
Mollat, M. (2006). Les pauvres au moyen age (Vol. 11). Éditions Complexe.
ONISR (2022). La sécurité routière en France, bilan de l’accidentalité de l’année 2021. https://bit.ly/3QmuR8H
Pratchett, (1993) Men at Arms, 15ème tome du cycle Discworld, Victor Gollancz Ed.
Smith, A. (1759). La Théorie des sentiments moraux. Presses Universitaires de France, Quadrige.
Szalavitz, M. (2017). Why do we think poor people are poor because of their own bad choices. The Guardian, 5 Juillet
Todeschini, G. (2021) Moyen Âge. La pauvreté a-t-elle un sens ? L’Histoire, février 2021.
Wang, J. (2018), Carceral Capitalism, MIT Press.
Weber, M. (1990 [1904]). L’éthique protestante et l’esprit du capitalisme, Pocket.

* Study entitled “Study of the double poverty penalty in France“, published at the end of 2022 by Action Tank Entreprise & Pauvreté, Boston Consulting Group and the Banque Postale

** This phenomenon, widely studied in the 1960s, see Caplovitz (1963), is known in economics as the “boot theory” (popularized by Pratchett’s novel (1993)), “take boots, for example. A really good pair of leather boots costs fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars (…). But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years.”

*** The notion of redistribution can be contrasted with the “Matthew effect” as defined by Merton (1950). Inspired by a passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew (which he reverses), he states that “to him who has shall be given, and he shall have plenty; but to him who has not, even that which he has shall be taken away.”

**** This rating practice is actually not new and dates back to the late 19th century: Josh Lauer (2017) shows that as early as 1870, so well before big data or even credit cards, US banks employed assessors to make financial strength reports on people. For Lauer, it is a gigantic surveillance system that was set up at the beginning of the 20th century, leading to the algorithmic credit scores as we know them today (see also François (2021)).