st: Assigning sex by order of birth

[Cinzia Rienzo <C.Rienzo@rhul.ac.uk>]

Dear All,

I have some difficulties in creating variables for children in the 
family accounting for their sex and order of birth; in other words I 
want to create the following variables:
“Boy1st” if   First child born is male;
“Girl1st” if First child born is female
“boy2nd” if Second child born is male
“girl2nd” if Second child born is female   and so on.

I tried with the “egen rank”  to create order using the reverse of  the 
age of children in families:
bysort year family: g agechil=age if member ==”child”
bysort year family: g agechil reversed= agechil*-1
bysort  year  serial : egen rank_var = rank(agechil reversed)

 But when I Tab the rank it gives me: 1; 1.5 ; 2;  2.5;  3; 3.5….. 
My question is:  How can I assign the sex by order of birth in families 
using the rank given that the age of first child and numbers of 
children vary by families? 
As in the example below the first child in family 1 is 12 year old and 
the first child in family 2 is 9.


Family    age of child         sex 
   1            12                 male
   1             5                  female
   1             2                  female
   2             9                  female
   2             7                  female
   2             4                  male  
   2             1                  female


I appreciate any helps and/or suggestions.

Best

Cinzia

------
Cinzia

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