$100 in 1913 is worth $154 in 1931,
because prices increased 53.5% over that period, an average of
2.41% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$154
in 1931
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
53.5%
Average inflation rate
2.41% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$154
Price difference ($100 base)
$53.54
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1931
15.2
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
$100 in 1913 → 1931
$154
$100 in 1931 → 1913
$65.13
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1931
Between 1913 and 1931, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 15.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 53.5%, which works out to an average of
2.41% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.65 buys in 1931: the 1913 dollar
lost 34.9% of its purchasing power over
these 18 years.
1913 is where this site’s price history begins, because it’s where the Bureau of Labor
Statistics’ own consumer price data begins. The CPI wasn’t published in real time back then;
the BLS built the earliest index retroactively from retail price records collected starting
in 1913, which makes every dollar figure on this site ultimately anchored to that year’s
prices. It was also the year the machinery of modern federal economic policy was built. The
16th Amendment, ratified in February, cleared the constitutional path for a federal income
tax, and the Revenue Act that followed in October imposed a top rate of just 7% on income
above $500,000, a narrow tax that would later be reshaped into the broad-based system that
funds the government today. In December, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, creating
the central bank that would eventually take on fighting inflation as one of its core jobs,
including the 19%-plus interest rates it deployed against the 1970s and early 1980s
price surge. Consumer life in 1913 was correspondingly simple by later
standards: a first-class stamp cost 2 cents, a price that held from 1885 all the way to
1917, and the Ford Motor Company introduced the moving assembly line at its Highland Park
plant that year, a manufacturing breakthrough that would spend the next decade driving down
the cost of a car faster than prices elsewhere were rising.
Every 1913 amount converts to 1931 at the same ratio, 1.54: $1,000 becomes
$1,535, and $10,000 becomes $15,354.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1931
$1.00
$1.54
$5.00
$7.68
$10.00
$15.35
$20.00
$30.71
$50.00
$76.77
$100
$154
$500
$768
$1,000
$1,535
$5,000
$7,677
$10,000
$15,354
$100,000
$153,535
$1,000,000
$1,535,354
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1931
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1931, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.41%
$154
Food
1.42%
$129
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1913: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), apparel (1914–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1913 to 1931
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1930s (9.0% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1931 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1913, at end
1913–1920
10.57%
102.0%
$202
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$169
1930–1931
-8.98%
-9.0%
$154
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $170 by
1922, on its way to $154 in 1931; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 18.0% in 1918, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1931, prices fell 9.0% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $154; the year's average CPI of 15.2 is the level
behind every 1931 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 9.0% in 1931, a sharp acceleration from the 2.3% decline
in 1930, as falling wages, collapsing farm prices, and a fresh
wave of bank failures fed a downward spiral that the still-contracting
economy could not shake. More than 2,000 banks failed during the year, far
more than in 1930, as depositors who had watched earlier banks go under
pulled their cash out of ones they feared were next. The crisis went
international that September, when Britain suspended the gold standard amid
a run on sterling. The Federal Reserve’s response made the domestic downturn
worse before it made anything better: to defend the dollar’s own gold
backing, the Fed raised its discount rate sharply that October, in two steps
from 1.5% to 3.5%, tightening credit at the exact moment the economy needed
the opposite. Not every headline that year was grim. The Empire State
Building opened its doors on May 1, briefly the tallest building in the
world, though so much of Manhattan’s office space sat vacant amid the
Depression that tenants stayed scarce and New Yorkers took to calling it the
“Empty State Building.” Consumer prices had now fallen for two straight
years and stood 53.5% above their 1913 level, down from the
68.7% margin of just twelve months before. First-class postage remained at 2
cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1931: $100 is worth $154 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1931/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1931. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1931/