2022 SCF Variable Names in Stata vs Codebook

[Jared Cornelius]

Hello, I'm working with the 2022 SCF data set and am really stumped on the variable names in Stata vs those in the SCF codebook. There appears to be an inconsistency in how variables are named. The data set is too large to load the whole thing into Stata, so I'm attempting to keep only the variables I need, but I can't seem to pin down the exact variable names. Any tips on how to find these variable names or load a partial data set into Stata without knowing the exact variable names?

Thank you for your help!

[daniel klein]

Hello, I'm working with the 2022 SCF data set

For those unfamiliar with the abbreviation, I believe it's the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). I'm not familiar with this dataset.

The data set is too large to load the whole thing into Stata,

Unless you have Stata BE (called IC before Stata 17), you can

set maxvar 32000

You should then be able to load the dataset, assuming it has at most 32,000 variables.

Any tips on how to find these variable names or load a partial data set into Stata without knowing the exact variable names?

Even with Stata BE, you should be able to

describe using filename

to get a list of all variables. Whether that's useful, I cannot tell.

Unlike describe using, my usesome command (SSC or GitHub) lets you specify a regular varlist (with abbreviations, wildcards, and dashes) or variable positions to load a subset of a Stata dataset.