$100 in 1920 is worth $83.50 in 1930,
because prices declined 16.5% over that period, an average of
1.79% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$83.50
in 1930
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-16.5%
Average inflation rate
-1.79% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$83.50
Price difference ($100 base)
-$16.50
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1930
16.7
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
$100 in 1920 → 1930
$83.50
$100 in 1930 → 1920
$120
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1930
Between 1920 and 1930, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 16.7.
Cumulatively, prices declined 16.5%, which works out to an average of
-1.79% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$1.20 buys in 1930: the 1920 dollar
gained 19.8% in purchasing power over
these 10 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 1930 at the same ratio, 0.83: $1,000 becomes
$835, and $10,000 becomes $8,350.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1930
$1.00
$0.84
$5.00
$4.18
$10.00
$8.35
$20.00
$16.70
$50.00
$41.75
$100
$83.50
$500
$418
$1,000
$835
$5,000
$4,175
$10,000
$8,350
$100,000
$83,500
$1,000,000
$835,000
Inflation by spending category, 1920–1930
Every category fell between 1920 and 1930: apparel the most, down 43.9%, and food the least, down 25.7%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1930, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.79%
$83.50
Food
-2.93%
$74.29
Apparel
-5.61%
$56.15
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 $87.50 by
1925, on its way to $83.50 in 1930; 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 1930, prices fell 2.3% and $100 from 1920 had the buying
power of $83.50; the year's average CPI of 16.7 is the level
behind every 1930 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1920 to 1930: $100 is worth $83.50 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1930/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1930. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1930/