Rebecca Kalmus
>
> Does anyone know a simple way to copy the contents of a
> variable for one
> observation over to a new variable in a different observation? For
> instance, suppose I have a data set consisting of married
> couples. I have
> three variables: a household identifier (hhid), a person
> identifier within
> the household (person) which equals one or two, and a
> variable for income
> (income). I want to create a new variable for spouse's income
> (inc_spouse). To do so I code the following:
>
> by hhid, sort: gen inc_spouse=income[2] if person==1;
> by hhid: replace inc_spouse=income[1] if person==2;
>
> This is a cumbersome process, which becomes more
> complicated for more
> complex data set--if, for instance, the households contain
> different
> numbers of people. In addition, with more complicated
> data, it becomes
> more difficult to check whether or not the coding is done correctly.
>
> Does anyone know a simple way of copying the contents of a
> variable for
> one observation over to a new variable in a different
> observation? It
> seems like something that would be done frequently enough
> that there
> should be some simple way of doing it. Any help is much
> appreciated.
It is simple, apart from the complications you allude to!
With just two people in a household, the spouse's income is
bysort hhid : gen inc_spouse = income[3-_n]
which includes your two special cases.
If you have some extra code (e.g. -child- is 1 for children
and 0 otherwise), there is stuff like
bysort hhid (child) : gen inc_spouse = income[3 - _n]
if _n < 3 & !child
Otherwise I am not clear what generalisations and/or
complications you have in mind. Nevertheless there is
some advice at
How do I create variables summarizing for each individual
properties of the other members of a group?
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/members.html
Adjacent FAQs could contain helpful examples.
Nick
[email protected]
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