How to combine multiple gender variables to one

[Martin von Brandt]

Hello everyone,

I am dealing with a somewhat complicated data that consists information about parents and their children. Therefore, questions about children are repeated 20 times assuming one respondent can have maximum of 20 children. So i have 20 columns for each children questions (e.g. 20 columns of child gender, 20 columns of child marital status, education, distance to parents etc.)

Since i cannot put 20 variables for gender, marital status, education etc. to my regression, I have to find a var to make these 20 variables into 1 variable. I was wondering if you can help me with this issue? How can i convert these variables into one? What can be the Stata command?

I am pasting an example of how my data look like. Thanks in advance for your help.
Best,

Martin

mergeid ch_gender_1 ch_gender_2 ch_gender_3 ch_gender_4
AT-000674-01 Male Male . .
AT-001215-01
AT-001492-01 Female Female Female Male
AT-001492-02 Female Female Female Male

[Nick Cox]

There need to be some rules here for precisely what you want. For example, 3 daughters and 1 son could be one variable that is a count of 4 children or another which is average female of 0.75. There cannot (obviously to me any way) be a reduction to one variable that preserves all the information.

[Martin von Brandt]

I think having '3 daughters and 1 son' kind of variables is going to solve my problem. When i checked the data i can see that most respondents have 0 to 5 children. So i can do the combination you mentioned. One question though: when i try to create only daughters or only sons or 1 son-1 daughter kind of combinations I have to write long codes (as below). Is there an easy code for me to use? Can i create loop? if so how?

*Creating only girls variable*
gen onlygirls=.
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_1==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_2==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_3==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_4==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_5==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_6==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_7==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_8==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_9==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_10==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_11==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_12==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_13==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_14==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_15==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_16==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_17==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_18==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_19==2
replace onlygirls=1 if ch_gender_20==2

replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_1==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_2==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_3==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_4==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_5==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_6==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_7==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_8==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_9==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_10==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_11==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_12==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_13==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_14==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_15==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_16==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_17==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_18==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_19==1
replace onlygirls=0 if ch_gender_20==1

Best regards,
Martin