Hello,

I have simplified an original question I had so that it is much more approachable. I have long data set with the following structure:
  • Person ID
  • Age
  • Current Education Enrollment

This education variable only states what education someone is CURRENTLY obtaining. So if a person was not in school, it is 0 (labeled "Not in School"). However, I would like to replace the 0's with the highest education level that the person has obtained by that year.

So in the example below, I would like to replace the "Not in School" values after age 23 with "Has Bachelor degree". My difficulty is that some persons were not in college <4 years, and for those persons, I would like to replace the "Not in School" with "Obtained some college" instead.

Therefore, this would be similar to a replace command, but I am not sure how to do this in the long format. Also, the exact value that the "0" value is being replaced with depends on the specific times an education state previously appeared.

Can you advise what command can help achieve this in the long-format?

With much gratitude,
S

PS: Just for reference, the following is entire data for just one person with the ID "1234". There are ~11,000 persons in my data:

Code:
ID    age    CurrentEnrollemntState
1234        
1234        
1234        
1234        
1234        
1234    0    Not in school
1234    1    Not in school
1234    2    Not in school
1234    3    Not in school
1234    4    Not in school
1234    5    Not in school
1234    6    In a Kthru12
1234    7    In a Kthru12
1234    8    In a Kthru12
1234    9    In a Kthru12
1234    10    In a Kthru12
1234    11    In a Kthru12
1234    12    In a Kthru12
1234    13    In a Kthru12
1234    14    In a Kthru12
1234    15    In a Kthru12
1234    16    In a Kthru12
1234    17    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    18    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    19    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    20    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    21    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    22    Full-time, enrolled in Bachelor’s degrees
1234    23    Not in school
1234    24    Not in school
1234    25    Not in school
1234    26    Not in school
1234    27    Not in school
1234    28    Not in school
1234    29    Not in school
1234    30    Not in school
1234    31    Not in school
1234    32    Not in school
1234    33    Not in school
1234    34    Not in school
1234    35    Not in school
1234    36    Not in school
1234    37    Not in school
1234    38    Not in school
1234    39    Not in school
1234    40    Not in school
1234    41    Not in school
1234    42    Not in school
1234    43    Not in school
1234    44    Not in school
1234    45    Not in school
1234    46    Not in school
1234    47    Not in school
1234    48    Not in school
1234    49    Not in school
1234    50    Not in school
1234    51    Not in school
1234    52    Not in school
1234    53    Not in school
1234    54    Not in school
1234    55    Not in school
1234    56    Not in school
1234    57    Not in school
1234    58    Not in school
1234    59    Not in school
1234    60    Not in school
1234    61    Not in school
1234    62    Not in school
1234    63    Not in school
1234    64    Not in school
1234    65    Not in school
1234    66    Not in school
1234    67    Not in school
1234    68    Not in school
1234    69    Not in school
1234    70    Not in school
1234    71    Not in school
1234    72    Not in school
1234    73    Not in school
1234    74    Not in school
1234    75    Not in school
1234    76    Not in school
1234    77    Not in school
1234    78    Not in school
1234    79    Not in school
1234    80    Not in school
1234        
1234