Value of $100 in 1927, adjusted to 1998

What happened to prices between 1927 and 1998

Between 1927 and 1998, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.4 to 163. Cumulatively, prices increased 836.8%, which works out to an average of 3.20% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1927 bought what $0.11 buys in 1998.

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.

More about inflation in 1927 →