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This study focuses on the content of eleven high school economics textbooks currently being used throughout the United States. We reviewed them with regard to their attention to the Voluntary National Standards in Economics developed under the auspices of the National Council on Economic Education. In the process of our analysis we made ten observations about these texts, including the statement that these books fall into one of two categories: large, encyclopedic volumes which we label as ‘Comprehensive’ or shorter books aimed at a specific audience which we label as ‘Specialty’ textbooks. While many of the texts have specific shortcomings, we see that the majority of them include more material than the national standards require. Overall there is less variation in the quality of high school textbooks today than was seen in earlier generations of texts; and we argue that the majority of the current crop of comprehensive high school economics texts provides a solid introduction to the economics discipline.

The cross-sectional and secular variations in the fertility of the white population in pre-Civil War Ohio are analyzed with special regard to the role of population pressure in conditioning these patterns and trends. Other factors, such as urbanization, education, cultural heritage, and the sex ratio, all of which are often cited as major explanatory variables during the demographic transition are also introduced. Although each of these variables is shown to have some impact, none can account for more than a minor proportion of the Variance in human fertility. It appears that the major force affecting both inter-county fertility and the secular trend for the state was the Variation in the degree of population pressure as measured by the average assessed value of an acre of non-urban land.

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