$100 in 1913 is worth $975 in 1982,
because prices increased 874.7% over that period, an average of
3.36% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$975
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
874.7%
Average inflation rate
3.36% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$975
Price difference ($100 base)
$875
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1913 → 1982
$975
$100 in 1982 → 1913
$10.26
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1982
Between 1913 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 874.7%, which works out to an average of
3.36% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.10 buys in 1982: the 1913 dollar
lost 89.7% of its purchasing power over
these 69 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 1982 at the same ratio, 9.75: $1,000 becomes
$9,747, and $10,000 becomes $97,475.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1982
$1.00
$9.75
$5.00
$48.74
$10.00
$97.47
$20.00
$195
$50.00
$487
$100
$975
$500
$4,874
$1,000
$9,747
$5,000
$48,737
$10,000
$97,475
$100,000
$974,747
$1,000,000
$9,747,475
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1982
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.36%
$975
Food
3.35%
$974
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 1982
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 1913–1982 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$392
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$832
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$975
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $243 by
1948, on its way to $975 in 1982; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $975; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1982: $100 is worth $975 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1982/