MPIDR Technical Report

Reshaping of Human Fertility Database data from long to wide format in Excel

Abstract

In the Human Fertility Database (HFD, 2012), age-specific data are presented in the long format, with both the years (or the years of the mothers’ births) and the mothers’ ages at birth in descending order, and with the age-specific fertility rates (or birth counts) corresponding to various combinations of years and ages placed in one long column. For constructing figures and performing other actions in MS Excel, it is useful to have the same data in wide format with the years (or the years of the mothers’ births) descending rightwards, and with age-specific fertility rates for these years placed in separate columns arranged next to each other. We provide a simple VBA/Excel program that reshapes long-format age-specific HFD data into a wide format. Keywords: age-specific fertility rates, long format, wide format, reshape.