$100 in 1923 is worth $139 in 1949,
because prices increased 39.2% over that period, an average of
1.28% a year.
$100 in 1923 has
the same buying power as
$139
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
39.2%
Average inflation rate
1.28% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$139
Price difference ($100 base)
$39.18
CPI in 1923
17.1
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1923 → 1949
$139
$100 in 1949 → 1923
$71.85
What happened to prices between 1923 and 1949
Between 1923 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 39.2%, which works out to an average of
1.28% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1923 bought what
$0.72 buys in 1949: the 1923 dollar
lost 28.2% of its purchasing power over
these 26 years.
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.
Every 1923 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.39: $1,000 becomes
$1,392, and $10,000 becomes $13,918.
Amount in 1923
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.39
$5.00
$6.96
$10.00
$13.92
$20.00
$27.84
$50.00
$69.59
$100
$139
$500
$696
$1,000
$1,392
$5,000
$6,959
$10,000
$13,918
$100,000
$139,181
$1,000,000
$1,391,813
Inflation by spending category, 1923–1949
Between 1923 and 1949, food rose the most, up 62.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 50.6%, against 39.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1923
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1923 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.28%
$139
Food
1.88%
$162
Apparel
1.59%
$151
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1923: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1923 to 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1923–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1923, at end
1923–1930
-0.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$81.87
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$139
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1923
$100 from 1923 had already become $81.29 by
1936, on its way to $139 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 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1923 had the buying
power of $139; 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 1923 to 1949: $100 is worth $139 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1923 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1949/