$100 in 1914 is worth $2,249 in 2011,
because prices increased 2149.4% over that period, an average of
3.26% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$2,249
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
2149.4%
Average inflation rate
3.26% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$2,249
Price difference ($100 base)
$2,149
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1914 → 2011
$2,249
$100 in 2011 → 1914
$4.45
What happened to prices between 1914 and 2011
Between 1914 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 2149.4%, which works out to an average of
3.26% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.04 buys in 2011: the 1914 dollar
lost 95.6% of its purchasing power over
these 97 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 2011 at the same ratio, 22.49: $1,000 becomes
$22,494, and $10,000 becomes $224,939.
Amount in 1914
Value in 2011
$1.00
$22.49
$5.00
$112
$10.00
$225
$20.00
$450
$50.00
$1,125
$100
$2,249
$500
$11,247
$1,000
$22,494
$5,000
$112,470
$10,000
$224,939
$100,000
$2,249,390
$1,000,000
$22,493,900
Inflation by spending category, 1914–2011
Between 1914 and 2011, food rose the most, up 2133.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 714.1%, against 2149.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.26%
$2,249
Food
3.25%
$2,234
Apparel
2.19%
$814
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 2011
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 1914–2011 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$1,307
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,722
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$2,181
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$2,249
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $310 by
1964, on its way to $2,249 in 2011; 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: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1914 had the buying
power of $2,249; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1914 to 2011: $100 is worth $2,249 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-2011/