$100 in 1920 is worth $85.50 in 1929,
because prices declined 14.5% over that period, an average of
1.73% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$85.50
in 1929
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-14.5%
Average inflation rate
-1.73% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$85.50
Price difference ($100 base)
-$14.50
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1929
17.1
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
$100 in 1920 → 1929
$85.50
$100 in 1929 → 1920
$117
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1929
Between 1920 and 1929, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 17.1.
Cumulatively, prices declined 14.5%, which works out to an average of
-1.73% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$1.17 buys in 1929: the 1920 dollar
gained 17.0% in purchasing power over
these 9 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 1929 at the same ratio, 0.86: $1,000 becomes
$855, and $10,000 becomes $8,550.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1929
$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, 1920–1929
Every category fell between 1920 and 1929: apparel the most, down 42.7%, and food the least, down 21.4%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1929, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.73%
$85.50
Food
-2.64%
$78.57
Apparel
-6.00%
$57.31
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 $85.50 by
1924, on its way to $85.50 in 1929; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 2.3% in 1925, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1929, prices rose 0.0% and $100 from 1920 had the buying
power of $85.50; the year's average CPI of 17.1 is the level
behind every 1929 figure on this page.
Consumer prices were unchanged in 1929, the CPI’s annual average flat for
the second time in six years and a fitting close to a decade that began with
wartime inflation and ended in rough price stability. By year’s end the
index stood 14.5% below its 1920 peak and roughly 73% above its
1913 starting point, a reminder that even a “stable” decade
left prices well above where they had started. The stability in the cost of
living masked what was building in financial markets. The National Bureau
of Economic Research dates the start of the Great Depression to that
August, the month the business cycle peaked, months before most Americans
noticed anything was wrong. The break came that October: panic selling hit
Wall Street on Black Thursday, October 24, and returned even worse on Black
Tuesday, October 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 12% in
a single session. Billions of dollars in paper wealth disappeared within
days, and the crash marked the start of a downturn that would pull consumer
prices into their steepest sustained decline of the 20th century over the
next four years. First-class postage was still 2 cents, a price that would
hold until 1932.
MLA: “Inflation from 1920 to 1929: $100 is worth $85.50 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1929/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1929. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1929/