$100 in 1914 is worth $965 in 1982,
because prices increased 865.0% over that period, an average of
3.39% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$965
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
865.0%
Average inflation rate
3.39% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$965
Price difference ($100 base)
$865
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1914 → 1982
$965
$100 in 1982 → 1914
$10.36
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1982
Between 1914 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 865.0%, which works out to an average of
3.39% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.10 buys in 1982: the 1914 dollar
lost 89.6% of its purchasing power over
these 68 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 1982 at the same ratio, 9.65: $1,000 becomes
$9,650, and $10,000 becomes $96,500.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1982
$1.00
$9.65
$5.00
$48.25
$10.00
$96.50
$20.00
$193
$50.00
$483
$100
$965
$500
$4,825
$1,000
$9,650
$5,000
$48,250
$10,000
$96,500
$100,000
$965,000
$1,000,000
$9,650,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1982
Between 1914 and 1982, food rose the most, up 854.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 552.0%, against 865.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.39%
$965
Food
3.37%
$955
Apparel
2.80%
$652
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 1982
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 1914–1982 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$241
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$296
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$388
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$824
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$965
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $238 by
1949, on its way to $965 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 1914 had the buying
power of $965; 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 1914 to 1982: $100 is worth $965 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1982/