$100 in 1929 is worth $81.29 in 1936,
because prices declined 18.7% over that period, an average of
2.92% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$81.29
in 1936
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-18.7%
Average inflation rate
-2.92% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$81.29
Price difference ($100 base)
-$18.71
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1936
13.9
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1936
1.46%
$100 in 1929 → 1936
$81.29
$100 in 1936 → 1929
$123
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1936
Between 1929 and 1936, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 13.9.
Cumulatively, prices declined 18.7%, which works out to an average of
-2.92% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.23 buys in 1936: the 1929 dollar
gained 23.0% in purchasing power over
these 7 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 1936 at the same ratio, 0.81: $1,000 becomes
$813, and $10,000 becomes $8,129.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1936
$1.00
$0.81
$5.00
$4.06
$10.00
$8.13
$20.00
$16.26
$50.00
$40.64
$100
$81.29
$500
$406
$1,000
$813
$5,000
$4,064
$10,000
$8,129
$100,000
$81,287
$1,000,000
$812,865
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1936
Every category fell between 1929 and 1936: food the most, down 23.6%, and apparel the least, down 15.0%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1936, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-2.92%
$81.29
Apparel
-2.29%
$85.02
Food
-3.78%
$76.36
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 1936
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1920s (2.3% a year) and fastest in the 1930s (3.0% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1936 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1936
-3.01%
-16.8%
$81.29
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $80.12 by
1932, on its way to $81.29 in 1936; 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 1936, prices rose 1.5% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $81.29; the year's average CPI of 13.9 is the level
behind every 1936 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1936, a third straight annual increase and part
of a slow, steady climb back from the 1933 trough, though
prices and the broader economy still had not fully recovered to their
pre-Depression levels. Voters delivered their verdict on that recovery in
November, reelecting Franklin D. Roosevelt over Republican Alf Landon in one
of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history: Roosevelt carried 46 of 48
states and won the Electoral College 523 to 8, a broad public endorsement of
the New Deal. Public works kept advancing that year, too. Hoover Dam, one of
the era’s signature projects, had been dedicated in September 1935, but its
first generators did not begin sending electricity over transmission lines
to Los Angeles until October 1936, a milestone that showed how long even a
celebrated project took to reach full operation. Consumer prices ended the
year 40.4% above their 1913 level, still 18.7% below the
1929 peak, a gap that would keep narrowing until a sharp new recession
interrupted the recovery the following year. First-class postage held at 3
cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1936: $100 is worth $81.29 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1936/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1936. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1936/