$100 in 1913 is worth $1,908 in 2004,
because prices increased 1808.1% over that period, an average of
3.29% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$1,908
in 2004
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1808.1%
Average inflation rate
3.29% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,908
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,808
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 2004
188.9
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 2004
2.66%
$100 in 1913 → 2004
$1,908
$100 in 2004 → 1913
$5.24
What happened to prices between 1913 and 2004
Between 1913 and 2004, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 188.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1808.1%, which works out to an average of
3.29% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.05 buys in 2004: the 1913 dollar
lost 94.8% of its purchasing power over
these 91 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 2004 at the same ratio, 19.08: $1,000 becomes
$19,081, and $10,000 becomes $190,808.
Amount in 1913
Value in 2004
$1.00
$19.08
$5.00
$95.40
$10.00
$191
$20.00
$382
$50.00
$954
$100
$1,908
$500
$9,540
$1,000
$19,081
$5,000
$95,404
$10,000
$190,808
$100,000
$1,908,081
$1,000,000
$19,080,808
Inflation by spending category, 1913–2004
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 2004, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.29%
$1,908
Food
3.27%
$1,862
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 2004
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 1913–2004 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$1,320
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,739
2000–2004
2.34%
9.7%
$1,908
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $292 by
1958, on its way to $1,908 in 2004; 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: 2004
In 2004, prices rose 2.7% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $1,908; the year's average CPI of 188.9 is the level
behind every 2004 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in 2004, with a 29-cent jump in the price of gasoline, to $1.88 a
gallon, doing much of the work. Crude oil passed $50 a barrel in October on rising demand
from China and India. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in four years on
June 30, to 1.25%, and it kept going: 17 consecutive quarter-point increases took the rate to
5.25% by June 2006. Housing was already running ahead of incomes. The median household earned
about $44,300, up 2.3% from 2003, while the median new home sold for $221,000, up about 13%. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15, unchanged since
1997.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 2004: $100 is worth $1,908 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-2004/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 2004. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-2004/