$100 in 1926 is worth $167 in 1960,
because prices increased 67.2% over that period, an average of
1.52% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$167
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
67.2%
Average inflation rate
1.52% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$167
Price difference ($100 base)
$67.23
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1926 → 1960
$167
$100 in 1960 → 1926
$59.80
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1960
Between 1926 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 67.2%, which works out to an average of
1.52% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$0.60 buys in 1960: the 1926 dollar
lost 40.2% of its purchasing power over
these 34 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.67: $1,000 becomes
$1,672, and $10,000 becomes $16,723.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.67
$5.00
$8.36
$10.00
$16.72
$20.00
$33.45
$50.00
$83.62
$100
$167
$500
$836
$1,000
$1,672
$5,000
$8,362
$10,000
$16,723
$100,000
$167,232
$1,000,000
$1,672,316
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1960
Between 1926 and 1960, food rose the most, up 76.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 76.4%, against 67.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.52%
$167
Food
1.68%
$176
Apparel
1.68%
$176
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 1960
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 1926–1960 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$136
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$167
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $92.09 by
1942, on its way to $167 in 1960; 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: 1960
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1926 had the buying
power of $167; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1926 to 1960: $100 is worth $167 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1960/