$100 in 1913 is worth $299 in 1960,
because prices increased 199.0% over that period, an average of
2.36% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$299
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
199.0%
Average inflation rate
2.36% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$299
Price difference ($100 base)
$199
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1913 → 1960
$299
$100 in 1960 → 1913
$33.45
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1960
Between 1913 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 199.0%, which works out to an average of
2.36% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.33 buys in 1960: the 1913 dollar
lost 66.6% of its purchasing power over
these 47 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 1960 at the same ratio, 2.99: $1,000 becomes
$2,990, and $10,000 becomes $29,899.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1960
$1.00
$2.99
$5.00
$14.95
$10.00
$29.90
$20.00
$59.80
$50.00
$149
$100
$299
$500
$1,495
$1,000
$2,990
$5,000
$14,949
$10,000
$29,899
$100,000
$298,990
$1,000,000
$2,989,899
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1960
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.36%
$299
Food
2.37%
$300
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 1960
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1960 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
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$141
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$243
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$299
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $145 by
1937, on its way to $299 in 1960; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1960
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $299; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1960: $100 is worth $299 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1960/