$100 in 1916 is worth $218 in 1949,
because prices increased 118.3% over that period, an average of
2.39% a year.
$100 in 1916 has
the same buying power as
$218
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
118.3%
Average inflation rate
2.39% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$218
Price difference ($100 base)
$118
CPI in 1916
10.9
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1916
7.92%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1916 → 1949
$218
$100 in 1949 → 1916
$45.80
What happened to prices between 1916 and 1949
Between 1916 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 10.9 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 118.3%, which works out to an average of
2.39% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1916 bought what
$0.46 buys in 1949: the 1916 dollar
lost 54.2% of its purchasing power over
these 33 years.
1916 was when World War I first showed up clearly in American price tags.
Consumer prices rose 7.9% for the year, easily the sharpest increase since
the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI history begins in 1913, as factories ran
flat out to fill steel, munitions, and food orders from Britain and France.
Railroad workers felt the squeeze from rising living costs enough to threaten
a nationwide strike; Congress headed it off in September with the Adamson
Act, which set an eight-hour standard workday for interstate rail employees,
the first federal law of its kind covering private-sector hours. Washington
was also preparing more directly for war: the National Defense Act, signed
in June, expanded the Army and National Guard and funded new
government-owned munitions plants, adding another source of demand to an
economy already running hot. Woodrow Wilson won re-election in November
largely on having kept the country out of the fighting so far, a promise
that would not survive the following spring. A first-class stamp still cost
2 cents, one of the few prices that had not yet moved.
Every 1916 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 2.18: $1,000 becomes
$2,183, and $10,000 becomes $21,835.
Amount in 1916
Value in 1949
$1.00
$2.18
$5.00
$10.92
$10.00
$21.83
$20.00
$43.67
$50.00
$109
$100
$218
$500
$1,092
$1,000
$2,183
$5,000
$10,917
$10,000
$21,835
$100,000
$218,349
$1,000,000
$2,183,486
Inflation by spending category, 1916–1949
Between 1916 and 1949, apparel rose the most, up 142.9%, while food rose the least, up 121.2%, against 118.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1916
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1916 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.39%
$218
Apparel
2.73%
$243
Food
2.44%
$221
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1916: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1916 to 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 16.39% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1916–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1916, at end
1916–1920
16.39%
83.5%
$183
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$153
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$128
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$218
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1916
$100 from 1916 had already become $126 by
1932, on its way to $218 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 1916 had the buying
power of $218; 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 1916 to 1949: $100 is worth $218 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1916-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1916 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1916-to-1949/