A Joint-Distribution Route to Fair Representations with Continuous Sensitive Attributes

Abstract

Fair representation learning with a continuous sensitive attribute $S$ requires a representation $Z$ that is statistically independent of $S$. Existing criteria, including generalized demographic parity, the expectation of integral probability metrics (EIPM), and mutual information, enforce this independence by averaging a per-value discrepancy between the conditional law $P_{Z\mid S=s}$ and the marginal $P_Z$ over the law of $S$. This approach requires a nonparametric surrogate for the conditional law at each sensitive value. We propose evaluating independence through a single joint discrepancy $d\left(P_{Z,S},P_Z\otimes P_S\right)$ between the joint law and the product of its marginals. We establish a disintegration identity; on decomposable witness classes it equals the conditional-integral functional that EIPM and generalized demographic parity instantiate. By reaching the same target without the conditional law, this discrepancy can be estimated directly from samples via a dependence statistic rather than conditional smoothing. We take the Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion (HSIC) as an instance of the joint discrepancy $d$ to investigate the statistical efficiency of replacing the conditional formulation. The HSIC estimator is a closed-form $O\left(n^2\right)$ statistic that converges at the $O\left(n^{-1/2}\right)$ rate, in contrast to the nonparametric $O\left(n^{-2/5}\right)$ rate of the conditional-route estimators. We prove this instance is equivalent to the conditional maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) integral up to an explicit spectral tail. The corresponding algorithmic implementation, i.e., FRHSIC, attains fairness-accuracy tradeoffs comparable to conditional-route basel es while reducing per-epoch training time.