Rectangularizing data

Frequently a user needs to combine records from one level of the data file with another level. For instance, in a hierchical file that has housing records and person records:

H00123645
P0155111678
P0253221478
H00223551
P0139111364
P0237221455
P0304139999

One may want to put the housing and person information onto the same record so that one could examine earnings differences (information from the person record) according to residence (information from the housing record).

In the above example, the first column indicates record type (H for housing, P for person). Combining selected information from the housing record (columns 2-5) and the person record (columns 2-6) results in the following:

0012301551
0012302532
0022301391
0022302372
0022304041

The following example shows how to transform the 1990 PUMs data into a rectangular file. The housing record is identified by an 'H' in column 1 and the person record is identified by a 'P' in column 1.

*****************************************************************
filename pums90  pipe 'zcat
/usr/data/public/us/government/pums/1990/1-1000/1990
.Z';
filename out1 'exer1.dat';
/* INPUT data */
data a;
   retain state msapmsa;
   infile pums90;
   input @1 type $1. @;
   if type='H' then do;
      input state $11-12  msapmsa $20-23;
      return;
      end;
   else do;
      input sex 11 race 12-14 age 15-16 marital 17 pwgt1 18-21
            rpob 29-30 yearsch 51-52 rlabor 91 rearning 127-132;
      if (race ne 2) or age<25 or age>64 or sex=1 then delete;
      else do;
file out1;
        put state $1-2 msapmsa $4-7 age 9-10 marital 12
            pwgt1 14-17 rpob 19-20 yearsch 22-23 rlabor 25 rearning 27-32;
        output;
      end;

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