Dear all,

I use panel / survey data and in my estimations I include variables like "age of partner" "employment status of partner" etc. How can I deal with the fact that these variables have missings if the person has no partner. I do not want these observations without partner to be dropped from the regressions.

Should I recode those with missings due to a lack of partner to -1, for instance? I'm not sure if this would bias my estimates.

I would be very grateful for any reply.

Best
Luisa