Approximation Algorithms for Socially Fair Clustering

We present an $(e^{O(p)} frac{log ell}{loglogell})$-approximation algorithm for socially fair clustering with the $ell_p$-objective. In this problem, we are given a set of points in a metric space. Each point belongs to one (or several) of $ell$ groups. The goal is to find a $k$-medians, $k$-means, or, more generally, $ell_p$-clustering that is simultaneously good for all of the groups. More precisely, we need to find a set of $k$ centers $C$ so as to minimize the maximum over all groups $j$ of $sum_{u text{ in group }j} d(u,C)^p$. The socially fair clustering problem was independently proposed by Ghadiri, Samadi, and Vempala [2021] and Abbasi, Bhaskara, and Venkatasubramanian [2021]. Our algorithm improves and generalizes their $O(ell)$-approximation algorithms for the problem. The natural LP relaxation for the problem has an integrality gap of $Omega(ell)$. In order to obtain our result, we introduce a strengthened LP relaxation and show that it has an integrality gap of $Theta(frac{log ell}{loglogell})$ for a fixed $p$. Additionally, we present a bicriteria approximation algorithm, which generalizes the bicriteria approximation of Abbasi et al. [2021].