$100 in 1923 is worth $155 in 1952,
because prices increased 55.0% over that period, an average of
1.52% a year.
$100 in 1923 has
the same buying power as
$155
in 1952
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
55.0%
Average inflation rate
1.52% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$155
Price difference ($100 base)
$54.97
CPI in 1923
17.1
CPI in 1952
26.5
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
$100 in 1923 → 1952
$155
$100 in 1952 → 1923
$64.53
What happened to prices between 1923 and 1952
Between 1923 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 55.0%, which works out to an average of
1.52% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1923 bought what
$0.65 buys in 1952: the 1923 dollar
lost 35.5% of its purchasing power over
these 29 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 1952 at the same ratio, 1.55: $1,000 becomes
$1,550, and $10,000 becomes $15,497.
Amount in 1923
Value in 1952
$1.00
$1.55
$5.00
$7.75
$10.00
$15.50
$20.00
$30.99
$50.00
$77.49
$100
$155
$500
$775
$1,000
$1,550
$5,000
$7,749
$10,000
$15,497
$100,000
$154,971
$1,000,000
$1,549,708
Inflation by spending category, 1923–1952
Between 1923 and 1952, food rose the most, up 86.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 60.5%, against 55.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1923
spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1923 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.52%
$155
Food
2.17%
$186
Apparel
1.65%
$161
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 1952
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1923–1952 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$141
1950–1952
4.86%
10.0%
$155
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1923
$100 from 1923 had already become $84.21 by
1937, on its way to $155 in 1952; 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 1952, prices rose 1.9% and $100 from 1923 had the buying
power of $155; the year's average CPI of 26.5 is the level
behind every 1952 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.9% in 1952, down sharply from 1951’s
7.9% as the price and wage controls imposed the year before held the cost
of living in check even with the Korean War still underway. Labor strife
tested those controls that spring: to head off a strike that could have
disrupted war production, President Truman ordered the government to
seize the steel industry that April, over the objections of steel
companies fighting the price the Office of Price Stabilization had set for
their product. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that June, a landmark limit on
presidential power, and steelworkers then struck for 53 days before a
settlement. Politics delivered the year’s biggest change that November:
Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, promising to “go to Korea” to
end the war and returning Republicans to the White House for the first
time since 1933. The Cold War’s technological edge sharpened that same
month, when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak
Atoll on November 1, a device hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945. Consumer prices finished 1952
167.7% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1923 to 1952: $100 is worth $155 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1923 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1952/