$100 in 1929 is worth $114 in 1946,
because prices increased 14.0% over that period, an average of
0.78% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$114
in 1946
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
14.0%
Average inflation rate
0.78% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$114
Price difference ($100 base)
$14.04
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1946
19.5
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1946
8.33%
$100 in 1929 → 1946
$114
$100 in 1946 → 1929
$87.69
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1946
Between 1929 and 1946, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 19.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 14.0%, which works out to an average of
0.78% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.88 buys in 1946: the 1929 dollar
lost 12.3% of its purchasing power over
these 17 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 1946 at the same ratio, 1.14: $1,000 becomes
$1,140, and $10,000 becomes $11,404.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1946
$1.00
$1.14
$5.00
$5.70
$10.00
$11.40
$20.00
$22.81
$50.00
$57.02
$100
$114
$500
$570
$1,000
$1,140
$5,000
$5,702
$10,000
$11,404
$100,000
$114,035
$1,000,000
$1,140,351
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1946
Between 1929 and 1946, apparel rose the most, up 39.3%, while food rose the least, up 20.0%, against 14.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1946, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.78%
$114
Apparel
1.97%
$139
Food
1.08%
$120
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 1946
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.68% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1946 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
1940–1946
5.68%
39.3%
$114
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 $114 in 1946; 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 1946, prices rose 8.3% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $114; the year's average CPI of 19.5 is the level
behind every 1946 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 8.3% in 1946, up sharply from 1945’s
2.3% and the sharpest increase since 1942, as wartime price controls
finally came apart. Congress let the Office of Price Administration’s
authority lapse at the end of June, reinstated a weaker version soon after,
then wound the whole system down through the rest of the year, releasing
years of pent-up demand into the price level almost at once. Meat was the
clearest casualty of the fight over decontrol: farmers withheld livestock
rather than sell at capped prices, producing severe shortages that spring
and summer until ceilings on meat were lifted that October, after which
supplies reappeared almost overnight. Labor cashed in its own wartime
restraint the same year. An estimated 4.6 million workers walked out at
some point in 1946, hitting steel, coal, automakers, and the railroads in
the largest strike wave in U.S. history, as unions pushed for wage gains to
offset cost-of-living increases controls could no longer contain. Amid the
turmoil, Congress made a less visible but lasting change to economic
policy: the Employment Act of 1946, signed that February, committed the
federal government to promoting maximum employment and created the Council
of Economic Advisers. Consumer prices stood 97.0% above their
1913 level, nearly double where the index had started 33
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1946: $100 is worth $114 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1946/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1946. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1946/