How to summarize three variables using a table?

[Adhikari Shubham]

Hi, I have a age and wage variable that is continuous and level of education. What would the best way to summarize mean wage for different age categories and level of education in a table. Any suggestion on how to visualize it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Chei Bukari]

If I understand you correctly your age variable is categorical and education variable too is categorical with only wage as continuous. If this holds then you can use a stata command to get a three way contingency table.
the command for this is:
bys age: su wage if level ==1 where 1 is the codename for 1st category. so if your level of education variable have 3 categories say 1=primary, 2=secondary, 3=tertiary, then you will repeat the same command 3 times with the respective codenames. eg
bys age: su wage if level ==1
bys age: su wage if level ==2
bys age: su wage if level ==3

this means you are summarizing mean wage across age categories and level of education categories.
All the best

[Marcos Almeida]

If you wish a direct command, you may try something like this:

. sysuse nlsw88.dta
(NLSW, 1988 extract)

. tab race married, sum(age)

     Means, Standard Deviations and Frequencies of age in current year

           |       married
      race |    single    married |     Total
-----------+----------------------+----------
     white | 39.414784  39.212174 |  39.27245
           | 3.0926082  3.0707114 | 3.0776908
           |       487       1150 |      1637
-----------+----------------------+----------
     black | 38.928803  38.678832 | 38.811321
           | 2.9697794  2.9918921 | 2.9802458
           |       309        274 |       583
-----------+----------------------+----------
     other |      38.5  39.666667 | 39.307692
           | 2.8284271  3.4299717 | 3.2467735
           |         8         18 |        26
-----------+----------------------+----------
     Total | 39.218905  39.116505 | 39.153161
           | 3.0499112  3.0660582 | 3.0600022
           |       804       1442 |      2246

If I understood correctly, you only wanted the mean, but the command above provides SDs and counts as well,

Shall you really need only the means, you may use - means - option for that:

. tab race married, sum(age) means

                       Means of age in current year

           |       married
      race |    single    married |     Total
-----------+----------------------+----------
     white | 39.414784  39.212174 |  39.27245
     black | 38.928803  38.678832 | 38.811321
     other |      38.5  39.666667 | 39.307692
-----------+----------------------+----------
     Total | 39.218905  39.116505 | 39.153161

Hopefully that helps.

[Adhikari Shubham]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. They were extremely helpful.