$100 in 1929 is worth $88.89 in 1931,
because prices declined 11.1% over that period, an average of
5.72% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$88.89
in 1931
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-11.1%
Average inflation rate
-5.72% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$88.89
Price difference ($100 base)
-$11.11
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1931
15.2
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
$100 in 1929 → 1931
$88.89
$100 in 1931 → 1929
$113
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1931
Between 1929 and 1931, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 15.2.
Cumulatively, prices declined 11.1%, which works out to an average of
-5.72% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.13 buys in 1931: the 1929 dollar
gained 12.5% in purchasing power over
these 2 years.
Consumer prices were unchanged in 1929, the CPI’s annual average flat for
the second time in six years and a fitting close to a decade that began with
wartime inflation and ended in rough price stability. By year’s end the
index stood 14.5% below its 1920 peak and roughly 73% above its
1913 starting point, a reminder that even a “stable” decade
left prices well above where they had started. The stability in the cost of
living masked what was building in financial markets. The National Bureau
of Economic Research dates the start of the Great Depression to that
August, the month the business cycle peaked, months before most Americans
noticed anything was wrong. The break came that October: panic selling hit
Wall Street on Black Thursday, October 24, and returned even worse on Black
Tuesday, October 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 12% in
a single session. Billions of dollars in paper wealth disappeared within
days, and the crash marked the start of a downturn that would pull consumer
prices into their steepest sustained decline of the 20th century over the
next four years. First-class postage was still 2 cents, a price that would
hold until 1932.
Every 1929 amount converts to 1931 at the same ratio, 0.89: $1,000 becomes
$889, and $10,000 becomes $8,889.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1931
$1.00
$0.89
$5.00
$4.44
$10.00
$8.89
$20.00
$17.78
$50.00
$44.44
$100
$88.89
$500
$444
$1,000
$889
$5,000
$4,444
$10,000
$8,889
$100,000
$88,889
$1,000,000
$888,889
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1931
Every category fell between 1929 and 1931: food the most, down 21.8%, and apparel the least, down 10.9%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1931, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-5.72%
$88.89
Apparel
-5.62%
$89.07
Food
-11.58%
$78.18
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1929: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1929 to 1931
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1920s (2.3% a year) and fastest in the 1930s (9.0% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1931 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1931
-8.98%
-9.0%
$88.89
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $97.66 by
1930, on its way to $88.89 in 1931; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at -2.3% in 1930, and prices fell 9.0% in 1931, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1931, prices fell 9.0% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $88.89; the year's average CPI of 15.2 is the level
behind every 1931 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 9.0% in 1931, a sharp acceleration from the 2.3% decline
in 1930, as falling wages, collapsing farm prices, and a fresh
wave of bank failures fed a downward spiral that the still-contracting
economy could not shake. More than 2,000 banks failed during the year, far
more than in 1930, as depositors who had watched earlier banks go under
pulled their cash out of ones they feared were next. The crisis went
international that September, when Britain suspended the gold standard amid
a run on sterling. The Federal Reserve’s response made the domestic downturn
worse before it made anything better: to defend the dollar’s own gold
backing, the Fed raised its discount rate sharply that October, in two steps
from 1.5% to 3.5%, tightening credit at the exact moment the economy needed
the opposite. Not every headline that year was grim. The Empire State
Building opened its doors on May 1, briefly the tallest building in the
world, though so much of Manhattan’s office space sat vacant amid the
Depression that tenants stayed scarce and New Yorkers took to calling it the
“Empty State Building.” Consumer prices had now fallen for two straight
years and stood 53.5% above their 1913 level, down from the
68.7% margin of just twelve months before. First-class postage remained at 2
cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1931: $100 is worth $88.89 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1931/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1931. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1931/