$100 in 1929 is worth $103 in 1944,
because prices increased 2.9% over that period, an average of
0.19% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$103
in 1944
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
2.9%
Average inflation rate
0.19% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$103
Price difference ($100 base)
$2.92
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1944
17.6
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1944
1.73%
$100 in 1929 → 1944
$103
$100 in 1944 → 1929
$97.16
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1944
Between 1929 and 1944, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 17.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 2.9%, which works out to an average of
0.19% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.97 buys in 1944: the 1929 dollar
lost 2.8% of its purchasing power over
these 15 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 1944 at the same ratio, 1.03: $1,000 becomes
$1,029, and $10,000 becomes $10,292.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1944
$1.00
$1.03
$5.00
$5.15
$10.00
$10.29
$20.00
$20.58
$50.00
$51.46
$100
$103
$500
$515
$1,000
$1,029
$5,000
$5,146
$10,000
$10,292
$100,000
$102,924
$1,000,000
$1,029,240
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1944
Between 1929 and 1944, apparel rose the most, up 20.6%, while food rose the least, up 2.4%, against 2.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1944, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.19%
$103
Apparel
1.26%
$121
Food
0.16%
$102
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 1944
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.89% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1944 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
1940–1944
5.89%
25.7%
$103
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $81.29 by
1936, on its way to $103 in 1944; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 10.9% in 1942, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1944, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $103; the year's average CPI of 17.6 is the level
behind every 1944 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose just 1.7% in 1944, down from 1943’s
6.1% and the slowest increase of the war years, as price and wage controls
held the cost of living nearly flat even as the conflict reached its most
expensive phase. The war itself turned decisively that June, when more than
150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, opening the
long-planned second front against Nazi Germany. Congress used the same
month to plan for the war’s end, passing the GI Bill on June 22 to give
returning veterans money for college or vocational training, low-cost home
and business loans, and unemployment benefits, a package that would reshape
American housing and higher education for a generation. The following
month, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered at Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, and agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, itself
pegged to gold, creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
to manage the new system. Consumer prices stood 77.8% above their
1913 level, a cumulative wartime rise held down by controls
that would start unwinding the following year. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1944: $100 is worth $103 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1944/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1944. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1944/