$100 in 1920 is worth $148 in 1960,
because prices increased 48.0% over that period, an average of
0.98% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$148
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
48.0%
Average inflation rate
0.98% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$148
Price difference ($100 base)
$48.00
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1920 → 1960
$148
$100 in 1960 → 1920
$67.57
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1960
Between 1920 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 48.0%, which works out to an average of
0.98% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$0.68 buys in 1960: the 1920 dollar
lost 32.4% of its purchasing power over
these 40 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.48: $1,000 becomes
$1,480, and $10,000 becomes $14,800.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.48
$5.00
$7.40
$10.00
$14.80
$20.00
$29.60
$50.00
$74.00
$100
$148
$500
$740
$1,000
$1,480
$5,000
$7,400
$10,000
$14,800
$100,000
$148,000
$1,000,000
$1,480,000
Inflation by spending category, 1920–1960
Between 1920 and 1960, food rose the most, up 42.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 6.0%, against 48.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.98%
$148
Food
0.90%
$143
Apparel
0.15%
$106
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 1960
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1920–1960 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$121
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$148
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1920
$100 from 1920 had already become $70.00 by
1940, on its way to $148 in 1960; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1960
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1920 had the buying
power of $148; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1920 to 1960: $100 is worth $148 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1960/