st: Re-assigning local macro values within loops after each iteration

[Stephen Cranney <cranney.stephen@gmail.com>]

Hi statalisters:

I'm running a loop that loops over observations and generates new
observations with expand when one of the observations has a certain
value for one of the variables. (It's a population simulation that is
simulating a new person when each childbirth=1, each observation is a
month/year combination for a specific id). I initially set the macro
at N= _N, but I want to re-set the macro every time it loops, this way
the simulation can run past the second generation. As it is, it saves
the initial _N value and terminates when that value is reached, but I
would like to re-assign the macro so that it equals the value of _N
after each expansion, allowing it to run into multiple generations
until it terminates because of other parameters I've imposed.

I have tried to place the macro within the loop to see if it will
re-do it, but it does not seem to be working. My syntax so far:

local N = _N
forvalues i = 1/`N' {
	local N = _N
	if childbirth[`i'] == 1 {
	expand 2, gen(newvar`i')
        egen Xnewvar= rowtotal (newvar*)
	drop if Xnewvar>1
	drop if Xnewvar== 0 & generationnum!= 1
	drop Xnewvar
	replace generationnum=generationnum[`i']+1 if newvar`i'==1
** A lot of code that differentiates the new child's demographic
characteristics from the parent's
    }
}

Thanks in advance,

Stephen
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