st: -reshape-, or "is there an easier way to reshape my data than how I am doing it?"

[Scott Cunningham <scunning@gmail.com>]

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to use reshape with the data  
in the form I currently have it in.

DATA:  1982-2004 CDC data on gonorrhea rates by age cohort, race, sex  
and state

      +--------------------------------------------+
       | year   fip   race   sex        gr   age |
       |---------------------------------------------|

where:

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-------
year            int    %8.0g                  YEAR
fip             byte   %8.0g                  State FIPS codes
race            byte   %8.0g                  W=1, B=2
sex             byte   %8.0g                  M=1, F=2
gr              float  %9.0g                  Gonorrhea Rate (per  
100,000)
age             float  %9.0g                  Age Cohort
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-------

I need to use -reshape- to transform the data into a format that will  
allow me to estimate various panel models.  I am going to merge other  
demographic data to this dataset, but that I can do.  What I cannot  
do is figure out how to get -reshape- to work here.  When I simply  
use -reshape-, I am told that I have fip/year that do not uniquely  
identify.  I know this, of course.  So, I thought that what I could  
do was create a race, gender and state specific gonorrhea rate.  So I  
did that.  It looked like this:

     +-------------------------------------------------------------+
      | year   fip   age       gbm       gbf      gwm      gwf |
      |--------------------------------------------------------------|

where gbm is "gonorrhea rates for black males," gbf for black  
females, gwm for white males, and gwf for white females.  I then - 
preserve- the data, keep only the one of the age cohorts (15-19 year  
olds initially), drop the age variable, and then try to -reshape-  
again.  But this doesn't work, because I have four fip observations  
for every year, that looks like this:

      +--------------------------------------------------------+
      | year   fip   age       gbm       gbf      gwm      gwf |
      |--------------------------------------------------------|
   1. | 1983     1    15    data        .        .        . |
   2. | 1983     1    15         .    data        .        . |
   3. | 1983     1    15         .         .    data        . |
   4. | 1983     1    15         .         .        .      data |

I need to collapse these observations so that it looks like this:

      +---------------------------------------------------------------+
      | year   fip   age       gbm       gbf      gwm      gwf     |
       
|----------------------------------------------------------------|
   1. | 1983     1    15    data        data      data      data  |

But neither -fillin- nor -collapse- appear to do the trick.

MY QUESTION:  How do I collapse the data like the above?  Secondly,  
is there a more efficient way to take my data in its original format  
and create a panel without having to create 9 different age-specific  
panels which I will merge later? 
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