MIFair: A Mutual-Information Framework for Intersectionality and Multiclass Fairness

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.28030v1
• Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:46:10 GMT
• Title: MIFair: A Mutual-Information Framework for Intersectionality and Multiclass Fairness
• Abstract summary: We introduce MIFair, a unified framework for bias assessment and mitigation based on mutual information.<n>MIFair provides a flexible metric template and an in-processing mitigation method inspired by the Prejudice Remover.<n>We show that MIFair effectively reduces bias, including previously unaddressed multi-attribute scenarios.
• Score: 7.889753821282368
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Fairness in machine learning remains challenging due to its ethical complexity, the absence of a universal definition, and the need for context-specific bias metrics. Existing methods still struggle with intersectionality, multiclass settings, and limited flexibility and generality. To address these gaps, we introduce MIFair, a unified framework for bias assessment and mitigation based on mutual information. MIFair provides a flexible metric template and an in-processing mitigation method inspired by the Prejudice Remover, defining group fairness as statistical independence between prediction-derived variables and sensitive attributes. We further strengthen its information-theoretic foundation by establishing equivalences with widely used fairness notions such as independence and separation. MIFair naturally supports intersectionality, complex subgroup structures, and multiclass classification and employs regularization-based training to reduce bias according to the selected metric. Its key advantage is its versatility: it consolidates diverse fairness requirements into a single coherent framework, enabling consistent benchmarking and simplifying practical use. Experiments on real-world tabular and image datasets show that MIFair effectively reduces bias, including previously unaddressed multi-attribute scenarios, while maintaining strong predictive performance across the evaluated settings.

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