How to shift a column by 1 year in Python

January 6, 2023

With the python shift function, you are able to offset values by the number of rows. I’m looking to offset values by a specified time, which is 1 year in this case.

Here is my sample data frame. The value_py column is what I’m trying to return with a shift function. This is an over simplified example of my problem. How do I specify date as the offset parameter and not use rows?

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

test_df = pd.DataFrame({'dt':['2020-01-01', '2020-08-01', '2021-01-01', '2022-01-01'],
                        'value':[10,13,15,14]})

test_df['dt'] = pd.to_datetime(test_df['dt'])

test_df['value_py'] = [np.nan, np.nan, 10, 15]

I have tried this but I’m seeing the index value get shifted by 1 year and not the value column

test_df.set_index('dt')['value'].shift(12, freq='MS')

>Solution :

This should solve your problem:

test_df['new_val'] = test_df['dt'].map(test_df.set_index('dt')['value'].shift(12, freq='MS'))
test_df


        dt   value  value_py new_val
0   2020-01-01  10  NaN     NaN
1   2020-08-01  13  NaN     NaN
2   2021-01-01  15  10.0    10.0
3   2022-01-01  14  15.0    15.0

Use .map() to map the values of the shifted dates to original dates.

Also you should use 12 as your shift parameter not -12.