$100 in 1929 is worth $81.29 in 1939,
because prices declined 18.7% over that period, an average of
2.05% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$81.29
in 1939
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-18.7%
Average inflation rate
-2.05% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$81.29
Price difference ($100 base)
-$18.71
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1939
13.9
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1939
-1.42%
$100 in 1929 → 1939
$81.29
$100 in 1939 → 1929
$123
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1939
Between 1929 and 1939, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 13.9.
Cumulatively, prices declined 18.7%, which works out to an average of
-2.05% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.23 buys in 1939: the 1929 dollar
gained 23.0% in purchasing power over
these 10 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 1939 at the same ratio, 0.81: $1,000 becomes
$813, and $10,000 becomes $8,129.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1939
$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, 1929–1939
Every category fell between 1929 and 1939: food the most, down 28.5%, and apparel the least, down 12.6%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1939, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-2.05%
$81.29
Apparel
-1.33%
$87.45
Food
-3.30%
$71.52
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 1939
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1930s (2.0% a year) and fastest in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1939 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1939
-2.02%
-16.8%
$81.29
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $78.36 by
1934, on its way to $81.29 in 1939; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.6% in 1937, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1939, prices fell 1.4% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $81.29; the year's average CPI of 13.9 is the level
behind every 1939 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.4% in 1939, closing out a decade in which the CPI
fell in six years and rose in four, leaving prices 18.7% below their
1929 level even after the mid-decade recovery. Measured
against the start of the CPI’s modern record, prices still stood 40.4%
above their 1913 level, a reminder that even a decade defined
by deflation left the cost of living well above where it had been a
generation earlier. The decade’s final months reset the economic picture
entirely. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France
declared war two days later; the United States stayed formally neutral
under the Neutrality Acts, but Allied orders for war materiel began flowing
to American factories almost immediately, a demand shock that would do more
to end the Depression over the next few years than any peacetime relief
program had managed. Domestic policy kept building on the New Deal’s
framework, too: the federal minimum wage rose to 30 cents an hour that
October, the second step in the schedule set by the 1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act. Amid it all, the New York World’s Fair opened April 30 in
Queens, themed “The World of Tomorrow” and drawing tens of millions of
visitors with exhibits on television and other technologies promising a
more prosperous decade than the one just ending. First-class postage held
at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1939: $100 is worth $81.29 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1939/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1939. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1939/