Quintiles using xtile

[Varsha Vaishnav]

Hello,

I want to divide the consumer expenditure variable into quintiles. I have individual-level data, but the expenditure is given at the household level. I'm using the below codes to generate the required variable:

sort common_id

egen byte tag = tag(common_id)

by common_id: egen MCE = xtile(usual_monthly_con_exp) if tag & sector==1, nq(5)

I'm not sure about it because stata is taking too long. Please help.

[Nick Cox]

If sector can vary within household then there could be observations for which sector == 1 but tag == 0.

I can't judge that without seeing a real(istic) data example but -- setting sector aside -- it seems more likely that you want just

egen byte tag = tag(common_id)  
egen MCE = xtile(usual_monthly_con_exp) if tag, nq(5)  

bysort common_id (tag) : replace MCE = MCE[_N]

as it does not seem plausible that you are assigning to quantile bins separately within households and that makes no sense anyway if expenditure is reported as the same constant for each household.

[Varsha Vaishnav]

Thank you, Nick. I now know where I was going wrong.