Price of Fairness in Short-Term and Long-Term Algorithmic Selections

Jabbari, Shahin; Wang, Chen

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2026/72

Price of Fairness in Short-Term and Long-Term Algorithmic Selections

Shahin Jabbari, Chen Wang

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Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Main Track. Pages 635-643.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/72

Keywords

Planning and Scheduling: Theoretical foundations of planning
AI Ethics, Trust, Fairnes: Societal impact of AI
Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Constraint optimization problems
AI Ethics, Trust, Fairnes: Fairness and diversity

Abstract

Algorithmic decision-making in high-stakes settings can have profound impacts on individuals and populations. While much prior work studies fairness in static settings, recent results show that enforcing static fairness constraints may exacerbate long-run disparities. Motivated by this tension, we study a stylized sequential selection problem in which a decision-maker repeatedly selects individuals, affecting both immediate utility and the population distribution over time. We introduce notions of group fairness for both the short and long term and theoretically analyze the trade-off between fairness and utility via the Price of Fairness (PoF). We characterize optimal and fair policies in the short term and show that the PoF can be large even when group distributions are nearly identical. In contrast, we show that long-term disparities can vanish under simple investment policies that achieve a low PoF. We also empirically validate these theoretical observations using both synthetic and real datasets.

Shahin Jabbari, and Chen Wang. 2026. Price of Fairness in Short-Term and Long-Term Algorithmic Selections. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26. IJCAI, 635–643. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/72

@inproceedings{ijcai2026p72,
  title     = {Price of Fairness in Short-Term and Long-Term Algorithmic Selections},
  author    = {Jabbari, Shahin and Wang, Chen},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-26}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
  editor    = {Diego Calvanese},
  pages     = {635--643},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = {8},
  note      = {Main Track},
  doi       = {10.24963/ijcai.2026/72},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/72},
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Price of Fairness in Short-Term and Long-Term Algorithmic Selections
AU  - Jabbari, Shahin
AU  - Wang, Chen
T2  - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization
PY  - 2026
SP  - 635
EP  - 643
DO  - 10.24963/ijcai.2026/72
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/72
ER  -