$100 in 1923 is worth $170 in 1959,
because prices increased 70.2% over that period, an average of
1.49% a year.
$100 in 1923 has
the same buying power as
$170
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
70.2%
Average inflation rate
1.49% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$170
Price difference ($100 base)
$70.18
CPI in 1923
17.1
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1923 → 1959
$170
$100 in 1959 → 1923
$58.76
What happened to prices between 1923 and 1959
Between 1923 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 70.2%, which works out to an average of
1.49% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1923 bought what
$0.59 buys in 1959: the 1923 dollar
lost 41.2% of its purchasing power over
these 36 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 1959 at the same ratio, 1.70: $1,000 becomes
$1,702, and $10,000 becomes $17,018.
Amount in 1923
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.70
$5.00
$8.51
$10.00
$17.02
$20.00
$34.04
$50.00
$85.09
$100
$170
$500
$851
$1,000
$1,702
$5,000
$8,509
$10,000
$17,018
$100,000
$170,175
$1,000,000
$1,701,754
Inflation by spending category, 1923–1959
Between 1923 and 1959, food rose the most, up 92.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 66.1%, against 70.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1923
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1923 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.49%
$170
Food
1.84%
$193
Apparel
1.42%
$166
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 1959
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 1923–1959 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
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$170
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1923
$100 from 1923 had already become $85.96 by
1941, on its way to $170 in 1959; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1959
In 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1923 had the buying
power of $170; the year's average CPI of 29.1 is the level
behind every 1959 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1923 to 1959: $100 is worth $170 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1923 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1959/