# FairWire: Fair Graph Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04383 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04383/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09635/) (2019)
- [Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03006/) (2021)
- [Variational Graph Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07308/) (2016)
- [Cascaded Diffusion Models for High Fidelity Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15282/) (2021)
- [Pitfalls of Graph Neural Network Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.05868/) (2018)
- [Predict then Propagate: Graph Neural Networks meet Personalized PageRank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05997/) (2018)
- [DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14734/) (2022)
- [GraphVAE: Towards Generation of Small Graphs Using Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03480/) (2018)
- [Score-based Generative Modeling of Graphs via the System of Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02514/) (2022)
- [Permutation Invariant Graph Generation via Score-Based Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00638/) (2020)
- [Deep Graph Library: A Graph-Centric, Highly-Performant Package for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01315/) (2019)
- [Learning Deep Generative Models of Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03324/) (2018)
- [Spatial-Temporal Fusion Graph Neural Networks for Traffic Flow Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09641/) (2020)
- [Say No to the Discrimination: Learning Fair Graph Neural Networks with Limited Sensitive Attribute Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01454/) (2020)
- [Machine Learning on Graphs: A Model and Comprehensive Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03675/) (2020)
- [NetGAN: Generating Graphs via Random Walks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00816/) (2018)
- [Towards a Unified Framework for Fair and Stable Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13186/) (2021)
- [Compositional Fairness Constraints for Graph Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10674/) (2019)
- [Graph Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13177/) (2019)
- [Self-Supervised Multi-Channel Hypergraph Convolutional Network for Social Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06448/) (2021)
- [EDITS: Modeling and Mitigating Data Bias for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05233/) (2021)
- [Bias and Generalization in Deep Generative Models: An Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03259/) (2018)
- [Efficient and Degree-Guided Graph Generation via Discrete Diffusion Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04111/) (2023)
- [Fairness in Graph Mining: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09888/) (2022)
- [FairDrop: Biased Edge Dropout for Enhancing Fairness in Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14210/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Fair GLASSO: Estimating Fair Graphical Models with Unbiased Statistical Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09513/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Fairness-aware Graph Neural Networks in Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18473/) (2025)
- [Deploying AI for Signal Processing education: Selected challenges and intriguing opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08950/) (2025)
- [FAROS: Fair Graph Generation via Attribute Switching Mechanisms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03728/) (2025)
- [Estimating Fair Graphs from Graph-Stationary Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07536/) (2025)
- [A Boolean Function-Theoretic Framework for Expressivity in GNNs with Applications to Fair Graph Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12751/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Machine learning over graphs has recently attracted growing attention due to its ability to analyze and learn complex relations within critical interconnected systems. However, the disparate impact that is amplified by the use of biased graph structures in these algorithms has raised significant concerns for the deployment of them in real-world decision systems. In addition, while synthetic graph generation has become pivotal for privacy and scalability considerations, the impact of generative learning algorithms on the structural bias has not yet been investigated. Motivated by this, this work focuses on the analysis and mitigation of structural bias for both real and synthetic graphs. Specifically, we first theoretically analyze the sources of structural bias that result in disparity for the predictions of dyadic relations. To alleviate the identified bias factors, we design a novel fairness regularizer that offers a versatile use. Faced with the bias amplification in graph generation models that is brought to light in this work, we further propose a fair graph generation framework, FairWire, by leveraging our fair regularizer design in a generative model. Experimental results on real-world networks validate that the proposed tools herein deliver effective structural bias mitigation for both real and synthetic graphs.