Identifying birth order within a household

[Erik Karlsson]

Hi!

I would like to identify and control for the first born male child within a household in my robustness analysis. In my dataset I have access to a unique household ID for each household as well as the number of children and an age variable. I feel bad for not knowing how to use this information but I just can't seem to figure out an efficient way of doing it.

I would appreciate any kind of tips or help!

Thank you in advance.

[Friedrich Huebler]

You are looking for the oldest male child among all children of other household members. For this you also need a variable that documents how individual household members are related to each other. The information you listed (a unique household ID for each household as well as the number of children and an age variable) is not sufficient.

These Stata FAQs may be useful:

• How do I create a variable recording whether any members of a group (or all members of a group) possess some characteristic?
• How do I create variables summarizing for each individual properties of the other members of a group?

If you still need help, please show an excerpt from your data. You can use dataex for this (see section 12 in the FAQ).