Between 1914 and 1990, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 130.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1207.0%, which works out to an average of
3.44% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.08 buys in 1990.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1914 spending costs in 1990, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.44%
$1,307
Food
3.43%
$1,298
Apparel
2.82%
$827
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–).
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1990
In 1990, the median U.S. household earned about $29,900, gas averaged $1.15 a
gallon, and mailing a letter cost a quarter. Inflation ran hot at 5.4% for the
year, its highest rate since 1982, pushed up by an oil shock after Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, and the economy tipped into recession that summer. It was
the last gasp of elevated inflation before the long calm of the 1990s.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 1990: $100 is worth $1,307 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1990/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1990. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1990/