Create a year variable to establish a panel variable-

Question

I have 3 variables in Stata that I want to make into a panel variable, f4hi. Currently, they are called f4hi97, f4hi98, and f4hi99. I want to pull the last two digits from these to create a separate year variable (1997, 1998, and 1999).

The image shows the way I want the data to look.

I have tried this command to reshape to panel, but it will not work without the year variable

reshape long f4hi97 f4hi98 f4hi99, i(id) j(year)

Ultimately, I want to be able to run this model:

xtreg f4hi99 f2s99d race sex byfaminc byt3_8, fe

Answer 1

It's a common error to supply reshape long with variable names. It needs stubnames. Also j() indicates a variable that will be created, not a variable in your dataset at present. You might try

reshape long f4hi, i(id) j(year)
replace year = 1900 + year