The Goals 2000 Educate America Act of 1994 included economics among the nine core subject areas that were targeted for the development of content standards. A new set of voluntary national content standards in economics, published in 1997, helped to guide administrators, teachers, and policy makers as they considered various educational objectives in the design of state-level content standards. Today, almost all states have content standards in economics across grade levels, beginning with kindergarten. This study examines the status of economics in the primary grades by examining cross-state variation in all the economics concepts and principles specified in state standards for the primary grades--defined as kindergarten through fourth grade. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures and 13 notes.)