What's it worth to ya?

Instructors regularly suggest that students look for information to compare and contrast. History, Sociology, Marketing, Accounting and the Allied Health programs look for statistics to use in these academic comparisons.

It seems like it ought to be easy to find statistics from one historical period that can be compared to the same type of event from another historical period. I've had trouble doing this online. I've rediscovered a book that pulls numbers from 1860 to 2004. These economic indicators can be used by a variety of program areas.

The Value of a Dollar 1860-2004, 3rd edition [REF HB 235 .U6 V35 2004] by Scott Derks is reviewed on Amazon by Booklist:

This engaging statistical summary presents the history of the American people through the prices they paid for a wide variety of products and services. The first section is organized into six chapters covering 20-year periods and then into subchapters covering 5-year spans. Each subchapter presents a chronology of mostly economic events; tables showing typical wages and incomes, expenditures, and investment yields; a representative "food basket" comparing prices in different cities; prices on items from alcoholic beverages to travel; and more. Following these summaries is a new section called "Pricing Trends," which tracks changes in the costs of goods and services in various categories and also show values compared to today's dollar.

Sometimes a print resource is easier to use than wandering through the wild web! Stop by your library and peruse the Reference collection. Let your fingers do the walking through the print information.

-kls