Differentially Private Estimation of Weighted Average Treatment Effects for Binary Outcomes

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Guha, Sharmistha, Reiter, Jerome P.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Guha, Sharmistha
Reiter, Jerome P.
author_facet Guha, Sharmistha
Reiter, Jerome P.
contents In the social and health sciences, researchers often make causal inferences using sensitive variables. These researchers, as well as the data holders themselves, may be ethically and perhaps legally obligated to protect the confidentiality of study participants' data. It is now known that releasing any statistics, including estimates of causal effects, computed with confidential data leaks information about the underlying data values. Thus, analysts may desire to use causal estimators that can provably bound this information leakage. Motivated by this goal, we develop algorithms for estimating weighted average treatment effects with binary outcomes that satisfy the criterion of differential privacy. We present theoretical results on the accuracy of several differentially private estimators of weighted average treatment effects. We illustrate the empirical performance of these estimators using simulated data and a causal analysis using data on education and income.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_14766
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Differentially Private Estimation of Weighted Average Treatment Effects for Binary Outcomes
Guha, Sharmistha
Reiter, Jerome P.
Methodology
In the social and health sciences, researchers often make causal inferences using sensitive variables. These researchers, as well as the data holders themselves, may be ethically and perhaps legally obligated to protect the confidentiality of study participants' data. It is now known that releasing any statistics, including estimates of causal effects, computed with confidential data leaks information about the underlying data values. Thus, analysts may desire to use causal estimators that can provably bound this information leakage. Motivated by this goal, we develop algorithms for estimating weighted average treatment effects with binary outcomes that satisfy the criterion of differential privacy. We present theoretical results on the accuracy of several differentially private estimators of weighted average treatment effects. We illustrate the empirical performance of these estimators using simulated data and a causal analysis using data on education and income.
title Differentially Private Estimation of Weighted Average Treatment Effects for Binary Outcomes
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14766