$100 in 1927 is worth $95.98 in 1930,
because prices declined 4.0% over that period, an average of
1.36% a year.
$100 in 1927 has
the same buying power as
$95.98
in 1930
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-4.0%
Average inflation rate
-1.36% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$95.98
Price difference ($100 base)
-$4.02
CPI in 1927
17.4
CPI in 1930
16.7
Inflation in 1927
-1.69%
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
$100 in 1927 → 1930
$95.98
$100 in 1930 → 1927
$104
What happened to prices between 1927 and 1930
Between 1927 and 1930, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.4 to 16.7.
Cumulatively, prices declined 4.0%, which works out to an average of
-1.36% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1927 bought what
$1.04 buys in 1930: the 1927 dollar
gained 4.2% in purchasing power over
these 3 years.
Consumer prices fell 1.7% in 1927, a mild retreat after three years of
gradual increases and part of a shallow up-and-down pattern that ran through
the second half of the decade. Aviation delivered the year’s signature
moment: Charles Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field, New York, on May 20 and
landed at Le Bourget Field outside Paris roughly 33.5 hours later, the first
person to fly the Atlantic solo and nonstop. Detroit closed a chapter of its
own that May, when Ford halted the Model T’s production line after nearly 19
years and more than 15 million cars sold, idling tens of thousands of
workers while its factories retooled for the Model A. The Federal Reserve,
meeting with European central bankers that summer, cut its discount rate to
ease pressure on currencies still recovering from the war, a move later
cited by economists including Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz as fuel for
the stock market speculation that built through the following two years.
First-class postage held at 2 cents.
Every 1927 amount converts to 1930 at the same ratio, 0.96: $1,000 becomes
$960, and $10,000 becomes $9,598.
Amount in 1927
Value in 1930
$1.00
$0.96
$5.00
$4.80
$10.00
$9.60
$20.00
$19.20
$50.00
$47.99
$100
$95.98
$500
$480
$1,000
$960
$5,000
$4,799
$10,000
$9,598
$100,000
$95,977
$1,000,000
$959,770
Inflation by spending category, 1927–1930
Every category fell between 1927 and 1930: food the most, down 4.9%, and apparel the least, down 4.3%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1927
spending costs in 1930, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1927 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.36%
$95.98
Apparel
-1.47%
$95.65
Food
-1.65%
$95.12
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1927: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1927
$100 from 1927 had already become $98.28 by
1928, on its way to $95.98 in 1930; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 0.0% in 1929, and prices fell 2.3% in 1930, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1930, prices fell 2.3% and $100 from 1927 had the buying
power of $95.98; the year's average CPI of 16.7 is the level
behind every 1930 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1927 to 1930: $100 is worth $95.98 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1927-to-1930/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1927 to 1930. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1927-to-1930/