Generating dummy variables WITH the value of the variable as name AND keeping the label of the new variable the same as the value label

[Silvia Salazar]

Hello stata community,

I have a problem while creating dummy variables and having the correct name and label. So I have an expenditure dataset with multiple households, consuming multiple goods. Something like that (I put after the : the label of the value given):

Family ID | Expenditure ID (expcode)

1 | 2 : Energy expenditure
1 | 5 : Utilities expenditure
1 | 7 : Food expenditure
2 | 1 : Housing expenditure
2 | 11 : Leisure expenditure
3 | 3 : Clothing expenditure
3 | 8 : Fruits expenditures
3 | 11 : Education expenditure

As showed above, very expenditure ID has a label that corresponds, for example 1 is Housing expenditure, 2 Energy expenditure, 3 Clothing expenditure, etc.

What I would like to do is to create dummy variables for each of the expenditure category that will have:
-As name, the value of the expenditure category with a prefix (like exp_).
-As label, the label of each expenditure category.

Which will translate into something like this for the first dummy variable: exp_1 : Housing expenditures
second dummy var: exp_2 : Energy expenditure

I tried with many different solutions and so far I have managed to generate the variable name correctly with either of these 2 codes:

numlabel, add
dummieslab exp, word(1) template (exp_@)

or

levelsof expcode, local(exp)
foreach i of numlist `exp' {
gen exp_`i'=expcode==`i'
}


but nothing on the label! I tried labelmask, label def and so far no results! If anybody could help me, it would be great, I have more than 500 variables so impossible to do it one by one thank you!

[Dave Airey]

Why not use label var inside the foreach loop since you already have the label levels and successfully created the named variable?

[Daniel Bela]

No additional ado files from SSC, nor loops, needed; this is built-in functionality with Stata's -tabulate-:

tabulate expcode , generate(exp_)

In case you want to change the variables' labels afterwards, of course, you will have to use a loop anyways.

Regards
Bela

PS: To ease giving an answer to possible future questions, please have a (second?) look at the FAQ (also linked at the top of each page) on how to post, especially the parts about data examples and using CODE-delimiters. Thanks in advance.