Ratio of male to female in a dataset

[Mahdi Hosseini Maasoum]

Hello. It's probably an easy question but I searched a lot and found nothing.


I have a data set and there is a variable indicting whether the observation is male or female( 1 for male, 2 for female). I want to make a table in which there is male to female ratio ( not male to total population ratio which tab command gives)

Thanks a lot

[Andrew Musau]

assert !missing(male)
recode male (2=0)
count if male
local M= r(N)
count if !male
local F= r(N)
gen wanted= `M'/`F'
lab var wanted "Male: Female ratio"
tabstat var1 var2 wanted

[Nick Cox]

I suspect that you have more structure to your data than you are telling us about. Let's assume a grouping variable and keep to 1 as male and 2 as female although as Andrew Musau implies you'd be better off with a (0, 1) indicator variable for most Stata purposes.

bysort group : egen males = total(male == 1) 

by group : egen females = total(male == 2)

and then your ratio follows. You don't need more tricks for more grouping variables, as a different prefix like

bysort group region year :

would just calculate accordingly.

[Mahdi Hosseini Maasoum]

Thanks for your great responses!