Number of children under 18 in household

I’m trying to create a variable that is the number of own children in the household under the age of 18. Is there anyway to do this using the NCHILD and YNGCH varaibles?

Thanks!

Hello,

I think it would be easier to use the MOMLOC and POPLOC variables. You can identify whether a person in the household is under 18, and then sum that up by MOMLOC and POPLOC, then merge those sums back into the original data. For instance, in Stata you would do something like:

preserve

gen nlte18 = (age <= 18)

collapse (sum) nlte18, by(year serial momloc)

rename momloc pernum

save kidspermom, replace

restore

merge 1:1 year serial pernum using kidspermom

Now, for each respondent, the variable nlte18 denotes the number of children less than or equal to age 18 in the same household who reported that respondent as being their mother.