$100 in 1920 is worth $119 in 1949,
because prices increased 19.0% over that period, an average of
0.60% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$119
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
19.0%
Average inflation rate
0.60% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$119
Price difference ($100 base)
$19.00
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1920 → 1949
$119
$100 in 1949 → 1920
$84.03
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1949
Between 1920 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 19.0%, which works out to an average of
0.60% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$0.84 buys in 1949: the 1920 dollar
lost 16.0% of its purchasing power over
these 29 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.19: $1,000 becomes
$1,190, and $10,000 becomes $11,900.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.19
$5.00
$5.95
$10.00
$11.90
$20.00
$23.80
$50.00
$59.50
$100
$119
$500
$595
$1,000
$1,190
$5,000
$5,950
$10,000
$11,900
$100,000
$119,000
$1,000,000
$1,190,000
Inflation by spending category, 1920–1949
Between 1920 and 1949, food rose the most, up 19.0%, while apparel fell 5.3%, against 19.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.60%
$119
Food
0.60%
$119
Apparel
-0.19%
$94.66
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–).
Decade by decade: 1920 to 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1920–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1920, at end
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$83.50
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$70.00
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$119
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1920
$100 from 1920 had already become $67.00 by
1934, on its way to $119 in 1949; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 14.4% in 1947, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1920 had the buying
power of $119; 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 1920 to 1949: $100 is worth $119 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1949/