$100 in 1926 is worth $75.71 in 1934,
because prices declined 24.3% over that period, an average of
3.42% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$75.71
in 1934
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-24.3%
Average inflation rate
-3.42% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$75.71
Price difference ($100 base)
-$24.29
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1934
13.4
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1934
3.08%
$100 in 1926 → 1934
$75.71
$100 in 1934 → 1926
$132
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1934
Between 1926 and 1934, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 13.4.
Cumulatively, prices declined 24.3%, which works out to an average of
-3.42% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$1.32 buys in 1934: the 1926 dollar
gained 32.1% in purchasing power over
these 8 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.1% in 1926, a third straight year of mild inflation
and part of the price stability that defined the middle of the decade.
Florida’s real estate boom, which had peaked the previous year on
speculative buying of undeveloped land, ended abruptly that September when
the Great Miami Hurricane made landfall near the city, killing hundreds and
wrecking the market for land whose value had rested on continued
speculation rather than anything underneath it. In Detroit, Henry Ford moved
his company to a five-day, 40-hour work week without cutting pay, a break
from the standard six-day schedule that other large employers would
gradually adopt over the following decades; Ford argued publicly that
workers with more leisure time would also become better customers for the
cars his factories built. Consumer prices remained low enough by historical
standards that a first-class stamp still cost just 2 cents, the same price
it had held since mid-1919.
Every 1926 amount converts to 1934 at the same ratio, 0.76: $1,000 becomes
$757, and $10,000 becomes $7,571.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1934
$1.00
$0.76
$5.00
$3.79
$10.00
$7.57
$20.00
$15.14
$50.00
$37.85
$100
$75.71
$500
$379
$1,000
$757
$5,000
$3,785
$10,000
$7,571
$100,000
$75,706
$1,000,000
$757,062
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1934
Every category fell between 1926 and 1934: food the most, down 31.8%, and apparel the least, down 20.5%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1934, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
-3.42%
$75.71
Apparel
-2.82%
$79.54
Food
-4.67%
$68.24
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1926: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1926 to 1934
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1920s (1.4% a year) and fastest in the 1930s (5.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1926–1934 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1926, at end
1926–1930
-1.44%
-5.6%
$94.35
1930–1934
-5.36%
-19.8%
$75.71
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $94.35 by
1930, on its way to $75.71 in 1934; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.1% in 1934, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1934, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1926 had the buying
power of $75.71; the year's average CPI of 13.4 is the level
behind every 1934 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1934, the first annual increase since 1926;
every year from 1927 through 1933 had been flat or falling,
so the turn marked a real break after eight years without a single gain.
Currency policy did some of the work. The Gold Reserve Act, signed January
30, formally devalued the dollar by raising the official price of gold from
$20.67 to $35 an ounce, part of the administration’s deliberate effort to
reflate prices after four straight years of deflation. Financial regulation
tightened at the same time: the Securities Exchange Act of June 6 created
the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock exchanges and enforce
disclosure rules, a direct response to the speculation blamed for the 1929
crash. The recovery was fragile and unevenly felt, especially on the Great
Plains, where drought had turned overplowed farmland to dust. Over May 9-11,
high winds lifted an estimated 350 million tons of topsoil into the air,
darkening skies as far away as Washington and New York and giving city
readers who had never seen a wheat field a first glimpse of the disaster
building in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Consumer prices stood 35.4% above
their 1913 level, still well below the 1929 peak but rising
for the first time since the Depression began. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1926 to 1934: $100 is worth $75.71 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1934/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1934. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1934/