Compare methods

	Optimal Matching Analysis	Intergenerational Elasticity
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	1970 (algorithm); 1980s (sociology)	1992
Originator	Needleman & Wunsch (algorithm); Andrew Abbott (sociological use)	Gary Solon (modern estimation)
Type	Edit-distance dissimilarity between categorical sequences	Regression-based measure of intergenerational income persistence
Seminal source	Abbott, A., & Tsay, A. (2000). Sequence analysis and optimal matching methods in sociology: review and prospect. Sociological Methods & Research, 29(1), 3–33.	Solon, G. (1992). Intergenerational income mobility in the United States. American Economic Review, 82(3), 393–408.
Aliases	optimal matching, OMA, edit-distance sequence comparison, Levenshtein sequence distance	IGE, intergenerational income elasticity, intergenerational income persistence, father-son income elasticity
Related	5	5
Summary	Optimal matching analysis measures how dissimilar two categorical sequences are by computing the minimum total cost of editing one sequence into the other through substitution and insertion/deletion operations. Borrowed from computer science and molecular biology and introduced to sociology by Andrew Abbott, it supplies the pairwise distances that underpin sequence analysis of careers, family histories, and other life-course trajectories.	The intergenerational elasticity of income (IGE) is the workhorse measure of economic mobility: the regression coefficient from regressing a child's adult log income on the parent's log income. It expresses the percentage by which a child's expected income rises for each one-percent increase in parental income, so a higher IGE means income advantages and disadvantages are more strongly transmitted across generations and society is less mobile.