$100 in 1929 is worth $81.87 in 1940,
because prices declined 18.1% over that period, an average of
1.80% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$81.87
in 1940
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-18.1%
Average inflation rate
-1.80% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$81.87
Price difference ($100 base)
-$18.13
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1940
14
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
$100 in 1929 → 1940
$81.87
$100 in 1940 → 1929
$122
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1940
Between 1929 and 1940, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 14.
Cumulatively, prices declined 18.1%, which works out to an average of
-1.80% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.22 buys in 1940: the 1929 dollar
gained 22.1% in purchasing power over
these 11 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 1940 at the same ratio, 0.82: $1,000 becomes
$819, and $10,000 becomes $8,187.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1940
$1.00
$0.82
$5.00
$4.09
$10.00
$8.19
$20.00
$16.37
$50.00
$40.94
$100
$81.87
$500
$409
$1,000
$819
$5,000
$4,094
$10,000
$8,187
$100,000
$81,871
$1,000,000
$818,713
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1940
Every category fell between 1929 and 1940: food the most, down 27.3%, and apparel the least, down 11.7%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1940, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.80%
$81.87
Apparel
-1.13%
$88.26
Food
-2.85%
$72.73
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 1940
Prices fell throughout this span: most slowly in the 1930s (1.7% a year) and fastest in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1940 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$81.87
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 $81.87 in 1940; 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 1940, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $81.87; the year's average CPI of 14 is the level
behind every 1940 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1940, snapping 1939’s decline
and marking the first increase since 1937. The gain was modest, and the CPI
still stood 18.1% below its 1929 peak, a reminder of how far
the recovery from the Depression’s trough had left to go even as defense
orders from Britain and France began reaching American factories. War was
already reshaping domestic policy well before it touched American soil.
Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act that September, the
country’s first peacetime draft, requiring men aged 21 to 35 to register and
authorizing the induction of up to 900,000 men a year, more than a year
before Pearl Harbor. That November, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented
third term, defeating Republican Wendell Willkie after campaigning on
keeping the United States out of the war then consuming Europe and Asia. The
promise would not hold much longer: within two years, wartime demand would
push consumer prices up faster than at any point since the aftermath of
World War I. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the federal minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour, the level set the previous October under
the Fair Labor Standards Act.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1940: $100 is worth $81.87 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1940/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1940. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1940/