$100 in 1914 is worth $238 in 1949,
because prices increased 138.0% over that period, an average of
2.51% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$238
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
138.0%
Average inflation rate
2.51% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$238
Price difference ($100 base)
$138
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1914 → 1949
$238
$100 in 1949 → 1914
$42.02
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1949
Between 1914 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 138.0%, which works out to an average of
2.51% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.42 buys in 1949: the 1914 dollar
lost 58.0% of its purchasing power over
these 35 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 1949 at the same ratio, 2.38: $1,000 becomes
$2,380, and $10,000 becomes $23,800.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1949
$1.00
$2.38
$5.00
$11.90
$10.00
$23.80
$20.00
$47.60
$50.00
$119
$100
$238
$500
$1,190
$1,000
$2,380
$5,000
$11,900
$10,000
$23,800
$100,000
$238,000
$1,000,000
$2,380,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1949
Between 1914 and 1949, apparel rose the most, up 172.0%, while food rose the least, up 145.1%, against 138.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.51%
$238
Apparel
2.90%
$272
Food
2.59%
$245
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 1949
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 1914–1949 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
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$140
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$238
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $137 by
1932, on its way to $238 in 1949; 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: 1949
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1914 had the buying
power of $238; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 1949: $100 is worth $238 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1949/