Matching different ID between two periods

[David Dahlgren]

Hi!
I have a problem that I wonder if anybody can help me with.

I have panel data of individuals were the time period is 2 years. Each individual have a unique identification number (indID) and a house ID which is unique in each region but different regions can have the same number.
What I want to do now is to see if an individual have moved to a new house or not (coded as a 1) and thus changed house ID (there is a theoretical chance that a person moves between two houses with the same house ID but different regions).

I don't know how to solve this but a first start is the following.

xtset indID year

bysort indID: gen Change=1 if house ID!=houseID[_n+1]

My problem with this code is that it gives a 1 in all houses in period 2, independently if houseID have changed or not.
Any good advice or alternative solutions?

[Andrew Musau]

bysort indID (year): gen Change=  (houseID[1]!=houseID[2])|(region[1]!=region[2]) & _N==2

See

help operators

The pipe here indicates "or", the rationale being that if you changed regions, you no longer reside in the same house.

[David Dahlgren]

Thank you Andrew, it worked perfectly!

Best
David

[David Dahlgren]

Just a clarification, if I would like to do the same but for severeal periods (say 10). And each pair of years will do the same, how should I do it then?