Causal Machine Learning for Econometrics: Causal Forests

Equity is not the same principle as equality. Within the social context they both relate to fairness; equality means treating everyone the same regardless of need, while equity means treating people differently depending on their needs. Consider vaccinations, if we based public health policy on equality, perhaps there would be a lottery system to decide who gets vaccinated first, giving everyone an equal chance. In practice, however, vaccinations are prioritized based on equity, those with the greatest risk, frontline healthcare workers and the elderly, understandably, are first in line. Assuming we understand the causal relationship between treatment and outcome, the question then is, how do we identify the subgroups who experience the greatest average causal effects, whether positive or negative.