Ankur Sarin
> I am trying to get the gini coefficient for each of my
> (around 200) groups. I am using ineqdec0 in Stata 8
> and was trying the following:
>
> statsby "ineqdec0 income" $S_gini , by(group1) saving
> (test_gini) replace
>
> However,this does not work and I get a new variable
> called _stat_1 with all missing values. Is there any
> other way to do what I am trying to?
No; this won't work for the following Stata reason.
Stata reads your command line left to right and,
among other things, substitutes any global and local macros
by their current values. This is _before_ you have even
run -ineqdec0- once. Elsewhere this has been referred to
as the "substitution first" rule.
But the global macro S_gini is at that
point undefined, unless perchance it is lying around from
a previous run of -ineqdec0-. (Even then -statsby- wouldn't
work as desired.) So Stata will see as what it presumes you meant
statsby "ineqdec0 income" , by(group1) saving
(test_gini) replace
with the consequence you describe. I don't believe
that -statsby- will work correctly with programs
like -ineqdec0- which leave their results behind
in globals.
But there are other ways to do it. Here's one:
preserve
gen Gini = .
levels group1, local(groups)
qui foreach g of local groups {
ineqdec0 income if group1 == `g'
replace Gini = $S_gini if group1 == `g'
}
bysort group1 : keep if _n == 1
keep group1 Gini
save test_gini
restore
For more details, see
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/foreach.html
Nick
[email protected]
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