$100 in 1929 is worth $105 in 1945,
because prices increased 5.3% over that period, an average of
0.32% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$105
in 1945
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
5.3%
Average inflation rate
0.32% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$105
Price difference ($100 base)
$5.26
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1945
18
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1945
2.27%
$100 in 1929 → 1945
$105
$100 in 1945 → 1929
$95.00
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1945
Between 1929 and 1945, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 18.
Cumulatively, prices increased 5.3%, which works out to an average of
0.32% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.95 buys in 1945: the 1929 dollar
lost 5.0% of its purchasing power over
these 16 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 1945 at the same ratio, 1.05: $1,000 becomes
$1,053, and $10,000 becomes $10,526.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1945
$1.00
$1.05
$5.00
$5.26
$10.00
$10.53
$20.00
$21.05
$50.00
$52.63
$100
$105
$500
$526
$1,000
$1,053
$5,000
$5,263
$10,000
$10,526
$100,000
$105,263
$1,000,000
$1,052,632
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1945
Between 1929 and 1945, apparel rose the most, up 27.1%, while food rose the least, up 4.8%, against 5.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1945, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.32%
$105
Apparel
1.51%
$127
Food
0.30%
$105
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 1945
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.15% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1945 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
1940–1945
5.15%
28.6%
$105
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $84.21 by
1937, on its way to $105 in 1945; 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 1945, prices rose 2.3% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $105; the year's average CPI of 18 is the level
behind every 1945 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.3% in 1945, up from 1944’s 1.7% but
still modest, a rate that understated how much pressure had built up behind
wartime price and wage controls, which stayed largely in place even as the
conflict that justified them came to a close. The year opened with a shock
at home: Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, less
than three months into an unprecedented fourth term, and Vice President
Harry Truman was sworn in that same afternoon. The war Roosevelt had led for
nearly four years ended without him. Germany surrendered on May 8, and
Japan surrendered on August 15, after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that month, with the formal signing aboard the USS Missouri on
September 2. Domestic policy kept moving even as the guns fell silent: the
federal minimum wage rose to 40 cents an hour that October 24, the final
step of the schedule Congress had built into the 1938 Fair Labor Standards
Act, up from 30 cents in 1939 and 25 cents at the law’s start. Consumer
prices stood 81.8% above their 1913 level, a gain that would
look modest next to what followed once wartime controls actually came off.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1945: $100 is worth $105 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1945/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1945. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1945/