$100 in 1914 is worth $1,039 in 1984,
because prices increased 939.0% over that period, an average of
3.40% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$1,039
in 1984
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
939.0%
Average inflation rate
3.40% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,039
Price difference ($100 base)
$939
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1984
103.9
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1984
4.32%
$100 in 1914 → 1984
$1,039
$100 in 1984 → 1914
$9.62
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1984
Between 1914 and 1984, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 103.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 939.0%, which works out to an average of
3.40% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.10 buys in 1984: the 1914 dollar
lost 90.4% of its purchasing power over
these 70 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 1984 at the same ratio, 10.39: $1,000 becomes
$10,390, and $10,000 becomes $103,900.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1984
$1.00
$10.39
$5.00
$51.95
$10.00
$104
$20.00
$208
$50.00
$520
$100
$1,039
$500
$5,195
$1,000
$10,390
$5,000
$51,950
$10,000
$103,900
$100,000
$1,039,000
$1,000,000
$10,390,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1984
Between 1914 and 1984, food rose the most, up 911.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 580.7%, against 939.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1984, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.40%
$1,039
Food
3.36%
$1,012
Apparel
2.78%
$681
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 1984
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 1914–1984 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
1980–1984
5.97%
26.1%
$1,039
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $238 by
1949, on its way to $1,039 in 1984; 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: 1984
In 1984, prices rose 4.3% and $100 from 1914 had the buying
power of $1,039; the year's average CPI of 103.9 is the level
behind every 1984 figure on this page.
1984 was the year the recovery became a boom. Real GDP grew 7.2%, the
fastest calendar-year growth since 1951, as the tax cuts passed in 1981
combined with falling interest rates and rebuilding consumer confidence.
Unemployment, which had topped 10.8% just two years earlier, fell below
7.5%. Inflation ticked up to 4.3% from 3.2% the year before, but nothing
close to a return of the 1970s wage-price spiral: the Federal Reserve under
Paul Volcker kept policy tight enough to hold the line while growth ran hot.
The strength of the expansion, branded “Morning in America” in President
Reagan’s reelection campaign, carried him to a 49-state landslide over
Walter Mondale that November, at the time the widest electoral-vote margin
in U.S. history. For households, the numbers behind the slogan were
concrete: median income rose to about $22,400, and a gallon of gas cost
$1.13, roughly what it had cost three years earlier even as wages kept
climbing. The contrast with 1980, when 13.5% inflation and interest rates
near 20% had defined the economy, could not have been sharper.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 1984: $100 is worth $1,039 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1984/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1984. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1984/