$100 in 1929 is worth $78.36 in 1934,
because prices declined 21.6% over that period, an average of
4.76% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$78.36
in 1934
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-21.6%
Average inflation rate
-4.76% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$78.36
Price difference ($100 base)
-$21.64
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1934
13.4
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1934
3.08%
$100 in 1929 → 1934
$78.36
$100 in 1934 → 1929
$128
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1934
Between 1929 and 1934, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 13.4.
Cumulatively, prices declined 21.6%, which works out to an average of
-4.76% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.28 buys in 1934: the 1929 dollar
gained 27.6% in purchasing power over
these 5 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 1934 at the same ratio, 0.78: $1,000 becomes
$784, and $10,000 becomes $7,836.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1934
$1.00
$0.78
$5.00
$3.92
$10.00
$7.84
$20.00
$15.67
$50.00
$39.18
$100
$78.36
$500
$392
$1,000
$784
$5,000
$3,918
$10,000
$7,836
$100,000
$78,363
$1,000,000
$783,626
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1934
Every category fell between 1929 and 1934: food the most, down 29.7%, and apparel the least, down 16.6%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1934, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-4.76%
$78.36
Apparel
-3.57%
$83.40
Food
-6.80%
$70.30
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 1934
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1920s (2.3% a year) and fastest in the 1930s (5.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1934 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1934
-5.36%
-19.8%
$78.36
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $88.89 by
1931, on its way to $78.36 in 1934; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.1% in 1934, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1934, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $78.36; the year's average CPI of 13.4 is the level
behind every 1934 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1934, the first annual increase since 1926;
every year from 1927 through 1933 had been flat or falling,
so the turn marked a real break after eight years without a single gain.
Currency policy did some of the work. The Gold Reserve Act, signed January
30, formally devalued the dollar by raising the official price of gold from
$20.67 to $35 an ounce, part of the administration’s deliberate effort to
reflate prices after four straight years of deflation. Financial regulation
tightened at the same time: the Securities Exchange Act of June 6 created
the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock exchanges and enforce
disclosure rules, a direct response to the speculation blamed for the 1929
crash. The recovery was fragile and unevenly felt, especially on the Great
Plains, where drought had turned overplowed farmland to dust. Over May 9-11,
high winds lifted an estimated 350 million tons of topsoil into the air,
darkening skies as far away as Washington and New York and giving city
readers who had never seen a wheat field a first glimpse of the disaster
building in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Consumer prices stood 35.4% above
their 1913 level, still well below the 1929 peak but rising
for the first time since the Depression began. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1934: $100 is worth $78.36 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1934/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1934. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1934/