$100 in 1926 is worth $134 in 1949,
because prices increased 34.5% over that period, an average of
1.30% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$134
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
34.5%
Average inflation rate
1.30% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$134
Price difference ($100 base)
$34.46
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1926 → 1949
$134
$100 in 1949 → 1926
$74.37
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1949
Between 1926 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 34.5%, which works out to an average of
1.30% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$0.74 buys in 1949: the 1926 dollar
lost 25.6% of its purchasing power over
these 23 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.34: $1,000 becomes
$1,345, and $10,000 becomes $13,446.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.34
$5.00
$6.72
$10.00
$13.45
$20.00
$26.89
$50.00
$67.23
$100
$134
$500
$672
$1,000
$1,345
$5,000
$6,723
$10,000
$13,446
$100,000
$134,463
$1,000,000
$1,344,633
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1949
Between 1926 and 1949, apparel rose the most, up 57.5%, while food rose the least, up 47.1%, against 34.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.30%
$134
Apparel
2.00%
$158
Food
1.69%
$147
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 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 1926–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1926, at end
1926–1930
-1.44%
-5.6%
$94.35
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$79.10
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$134
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $81.36 by
1937, on its way to $134 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 1926 had the buying
power of $134; 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 1926 to 1949: $100 is worth $134 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1949/