reshaping missing variables

[Melat Kassa]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a dataset with years ranging from 1975 to 2018. However one of the variables (famid) i'm using only exists after 1984. I then used famid to create another variable (primeagefam). I created the variable and tried to make it missing for years before 1984 but STATA is giving me an error message when i tried reshaping the data (i'm guessing you can't reshape missing values in stata?) My end goal is to have primagefam as one of my columns and all the years before 1984 to be missing (i have other columns as well but all of them have data for all the years starting from 1974). Can you please tell me how i can do this?

Here is part of my code (line 41 and 46 is were i tried to create the missing variables)

[William Lisowski]

i'm guessing you can't reshape missing values in stata?

Bad guess, Stata allows you to reshape missing values.

In any event, it's not clear to me how primeagefam will have any bearing on the problem, since your gcollapse command does not include primeagefam, so I do not expect it to appear in the dataset that is being reshaped. But I could be wrong, I'm just guessing about what is happening.

STATA is giving me an error message when i tried reshaping the data

Perhaps you could share the error message from Stata with us? They are often very informative and helpful in figuring out what went wrong.

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[Melat Kassa]

Oh i do collapse using primeage fam in another part of my code. Also here is the error stata gives me.

[William Lisowski]

You can have missing values in the variables you are reshaping, like lfpr_prime.

But you cannot use a missing value as part of the name of a variable that's been reshaped. That is what you are trying to do, rather than

reshape missing values

You have primeagefam = 0 or 1 in 1984 and later, so your wide variable names will become

lfpr_prime0
lfpr_prime1

if you only reshaped data from 1984 and later. But you cannot have a variable named

lfpr_prime.

for years before 1984 - that is not a legal Stata varaible name.

After your collapse, do something like

replace primeagefam = 9 if primeagefam==.

and you can then reshape, creating lfpr_prime9 along with the other two variables.

In post #1 you wrote

My end goal is to have primagefam as one of my columns and all the years before 1984 to be missing

but that is not at all what using j(primeagefam) causes to happen, so I am not sure this is going to do what you expect.