Dear Theo,

In Stata, you can show the histograms side by side using the hist command with the by option. To do this you would need to append the PR files from different years and create a year variable. The you can use the following command: hist haz, by(year)
Also, there is an alternative suggestion described in the links below. You would also need to append the PR files from different years before attempting this.
https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/stata/faq/how-can-i-overlay-two- histograms/
https://www.stata.com/new-in-stata/transparency-in-graphs/

Be sure to replace any values greater than 600 for the haz (hc70), waz (hc71), and whz (hc72) before plotting the histogram

Best,

Shireen Assaf
Technical Specialist
The DHS Program

Dear Theo,
For any software you would need to use the PR files and use the variables hc70, hc71, hc72. For surveys before 2005 we have HW files that can be merged with the PR files to get the 2006 WHO reference values. The HW files contain the haz, waz, and whz according to the WHO reference. Then you can generate haz, waz, whz as follows (you can see the logic that you can adapt for your software of choice).

generate haz=hc70/100
replace haz=. if hc70>600
replace haz=. if hv103==0

Do the same as above for waz with hc71 and whz with hc72 . hv103 is the variable to indicate if the children are de facto or not. The DHS tables report anthropometric measures for de facto children (see notes on the bottom of the DHS tables).
The same software you use to clean and construct the variables should allow you to then plot the data.

We will only be able to answer questions on how to use the DHS data but cannot help with questions on which software to use or how to use it.

Hope these instructions will help.

Thank you.

Best,

Shireen Assaf