My main purpose is to see how a person changes job and how it affects the wage in few selective states.

My sample is from 1995-2005. But, I haven’t been able to code it properly to come up with the matching. I think it would be best to see what’s the maximum time CPSIDP shows up within 16 months cycle ( 4-8-4 cycle of CPS where they interview a household for 4 consecutive months , then give them a break for 8 months , and they take their interview for 4 consecutive months again till they never repeat their interview ever with same CPSIDP ). So, for a unique CPSIDP the longest amount of period can be tracked is - 16 months.

So, after going through and reading a few more relevant posts and very helpful feedback of IPUMS community I came with the following command to create the 16 months' panel ( which I adapted a little from the command given in this post : FAILURE: Linking to the Same Calendar Month across Two Consecutive Years from JULY 1994 to AUGUST 1995



gen time = ym(year, month)

forvalues t=372(1)680{

keep if (time== t' & mish==8)|(time== t’-16 & mish==4)

order cpsidp year month

sort cpsidp year month

by cpsidp: gen obs=_N

by cpsidp: drop if obs!=2

In the above command , I just changed the third line from the one provided in the post by putting time==t’-16 instead of time== t’-12 , since I’m trying to link observation throughout 16 months instead of making it a one year panel data.

And, the command provided in the post is for finding EARNWEEK , whereas in my case the outcome is INCWAGE and UHRSWEEK1.

Are using the mish==8 and mish==4 correct choice of values given that I’m creating a 16 month panel data whereas the post maker was creating one year panel data ?

I hope I’m making sense. And, if my post goes a little off track because of not holding a good grip over the basic concept - any helpful suggestion or advice is very much welcome from respected Statalist community !

My apologies for posting something IPUMS related here but previously I got very useful feedback from statalist community , therefore again asking for suggestion !