$100 in 1914 is worth $109 in 1916,
because prices increased 9.0% over that period, an average of
4.40% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$109
in 1916
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
9.0%
Average inflation rate
4.40% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$109
Price difference ($100 base)
$9.00
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1916
10.9
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1916
7.92%
$100 in 1914 → 1916
$109
$100 in 1916 → 1914
$91.74
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1916
Between 1914 and 1916, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 10.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 9.0%, which works out to an average of
4.40% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.92 buys in 1916: the 1914 dollar
lost 8.3% of its purchasing power over
these 2 years.
Consumer prices barely moved in 1914, rising just 1.0% for the year, even as
the country’s financial plumbing was rebuilt from the ground up. The Federal
Reserve Banks, created by the Federal Reserve Act signed the previous
December, opened their doors on November 16, giving the U.S. a central bank
for the first time since the 1830s. Weeks earlier, the outbreak of war in
Europe had spooked the New York Stock Exchange into closing for more than
four months, the longest shutdown in its history, as officials worried
European investors would dump American securities for gold. Domestically, the
bigger story was labor: Henry Ford’s decision to pay factory workers $5 a
day, announced in January, roughly doubled wages on his assembly lines and
pushed other manufacturers to raise pay just to keep workers from leaving. A
first-class stamp still cost 2 cents, a price that had held since 1885 and
would keep holding for three more years, even as the war reshaping Europe
began pulling the American economy toward the sustained wartime inflation of
1917.
Every 1914 amount converts to 1916 at the same ratio, 1.09: $1,000 becomes
$1,090, and $10,000 becomes $10,900.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1916
$1.00
$1.09
$5.00
$5.45
$10.00
$10.90
$20.00
$21.80
$50.00
$54.50
$100
$109
$500
$545
$1,000
$1,090
$5,000
$5,450
$10,000
$10,900
$100,000
$109,000
$1,000,000
$1,090,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1916
Between 1914 and 1916, apparel rose the most, up 12.0%, while food rose the least, up 10.8%, against 9.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1916, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.40%
$109
Apparel
5.83%
$112
Food
5.25%
$111
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1914: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $101 by
1915, on its way to $109 in 1916; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 7.9% in 1916, and the smallest rise was 1.0% in 1915.
In 1916, prices rose 7.9% and $100 from 1914 had the buying
power of $109; the year's average CPI of 10.9 is the level
behind every 1916 figure on this page.
1916 was when World War I first showed up clearly in American price tags.
Consumer prices rose 7.9% for the year, easily the sharpest increase since
the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI history begins in 1913, as factories ran
flat out to fill steel, munitions, and food orders from Britain and France.
Railroad workers felt the squeeze from rising living costs enough to threaten
a nationwide strike; Congress headed it off in September with the Adamson
Act, which set an eight-hour standard workday for interstate rail employees,
the first federal law of its kind covering private-sector hours. Washington
was also preparing more directly for war: the National Defense Act, signed
in June, expanded the Army and National Guard and funded new
government-owned munitions plants, adding another source of demand to an
economy already running hot. Woodrow Wilson won re-election in November
largely on having kept the country out of the fighting so far, a promise
that would not survive the following spring. A first-class stamp still cost
2 cents, one of the few prices that had not yet moved.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 1916: $100 is worth $109 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1916/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1916. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1916/