$100 in 1914 is worth $167 in 1930,
because prices increased 67.0% over that period, an average of
3.26% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$167
in 1930
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
67.0%
Average inflation rate
3.26% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$167
Price difference ($100 base)
$67.00
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1930
16.7
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
$100 in 1914 → 1930
$167
$100 in 1930 → 1914
$59.88
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1930
Between 1914 and 1930, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 16.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 67.0%, which works out to an average of
3.26% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.60 buys in 1930: the 1914 dollar
lost 40.1% of its purchasing power over
these 16 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 1930 at the same ratio, 1.67: $1,000 becomes
$1,670, and $10,000 becomes $16,700.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1930
$1.00
$1.67
$5.00
$8.35
$10.00
$16.70
$20.00
$33.40
$50.00
$83.50
$100
$167
$500
$835
$1,000
$1,670
$5,000
$8,350
$10,000
$16,700
$100,000
$167,000
$1,000,000
$1,670,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1930
Between 1914 and 1930, apparel rose the most, up 61.3%, while food rose the least, up 52.9%, against 67.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1930, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.26%
$167
Apparel
3.03%
$161
Food
2.69%
$153
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–).
Decade by decade: 1914 to 1930
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 12.25% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1914–1930 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1914, at end
1914–1920
12.25%
100.0%
$200
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$167
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $168 by
1922, on its way to $167 in 1930; 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 1930, prices fell 2.3% and $100 from 1914 had the buying
power of $167; the year's average CPI of 16.7 is the level
behind every 1930 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 1930: $100 is worth $167 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1930/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1930. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1930/