$100 in 1920 is worth $85.50 in 1923,
because prices declined 14.5% over that period, an average of
5.09% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$85.50
in 1923
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-14.5%
Average inflation rate
-5.09% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$85.50
Price difference ($100 base)
-$14.50
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1923
17.1
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
$100 in 1920 → 1923
$85.50
$100 in 1923 → 1920
$117
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1923
Between 1920 and 1923, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 17.1.
Cumulatively, prices declined 14.5%, which works out to an average of
-5.09% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$1.17 buys in 1923: the 1920 dollar
gained 17.0% in purchasing power over
these 3 years.
1920 was the last year of the inflation that had built since the war began:
consumer prices rose 15.6% for the year, leaving the CPI more than double its
1913 starting level after seven straight years of increases.
The boom behind those increases turned to bust before the year was over. The
Federal Reserve, worried about speculation, pushed its discount rate to a
record 7% that spring, and wholesale prices, which had led the wartime
runup, began collapsing within months. The National Bureau of Economic
Research dates the resulting downturn from January 1920 to July 1921, one of
the shortest but steepest contractions in U.S. history, and consumer prices
followed into outright decline, falling 10.5% in 1921. Two constitutional
changes reshaped the country that year, too. The 18th Amendment’s ban on
alcohol took legal effect January 17, enforced under the Volstead Act
Congress had passed the previous October. Then, on August 18, Tennessee’s
ratification of the 19th Amendment secured women’s right to vote nationwide,
and women cast ballots in a presidential election for the first time that
November, when Warren Harding won on a promise to return the country to
“normalcy” after a decade of war, pandemic, and rising prices. First-class
postage held at 2 cents, unchanged since mid-1919.
Every 1920 amount converts to 1923 at the same ratio, 0.86: $1,000 becomes
$855, and $10,000 becomes $8,550.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1923
$1.00
$0.86
$5.00
$4.28
$10.00
$8.55
$20.00
$17.10
$50.00
$42.75
$100
$85.50
$500
$428
$1,000
$855
$5,000
$4,275
$10,000
$8,550
$100,000
$85,500
$1,000,000
$855,000
Inflation by spending category, 1920–1923
Every category fell between 1920 and 1923: apparel the most, down 37.1%, and food the least, down 26.7%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1923, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
-5.09%
$85.50
Food
-9.82%
$73.33
Apparel
-14.33%
$62.88
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1920: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1920
$100 from 1920 had already become $89.50 by
1921, on its way to $85.50 in 1923; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 1.8% in 1923, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1923, prices rose 1.8% and $100 from 1920 had the buying
power of $85.50; the year's average CPI of 17.1 is the level
behind every 1923 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.8% in 1923, the first increase since 1920 and a sign
the postwar deflation had run its course; the economy settled into the
steadier growth that defined much of the rest of the decade. The year’s
biggest shock was political rather than economic: Warren Harding died August
2 in San Francisco while returning from a trip to Alaska, and Vice President
Calvin Coolidge was sworn in the next day at his family’s farmhouse in
Plymouth Notch, Vermont, administered the oath of office by his own father,
a notary public, by lamplight. Coolidge would go on to preside over the low,
stable inflation of the “Roaring Twenties.” The contrast with Germany that
year was stark. The Weimar Republic’s currency collapse reached its peak in
November 1923, with prices doubling every few days and a loaf of bread
costing billions of marks; Germany introduced a new currency, the
Rentenmark, that month to halt the spiral. U.S. consumer prices, by
comparison, had moved in single digits or held flat every year since 1921, a
gap that shaped how American economists would later think about what made
the postwar inflation of Europe so different from the mild swings at home.
First-class postage stayed at 2 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1920 to 1923: $100 is worth $85.50 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1923/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1923. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1923/