$100 in 1929 is worth $139 in 1949,
because prices increased 39.2% over that period, an average of
1.67% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$139
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
39.2%
Average inflation rate
1.67% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$139
Price difference ($100 base)
$39.18
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1929 → 1949
$139
$100 in 1949 → 1929
$71.85
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1949
Between 1929 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 39.2%, which works out to an average of
1.67% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.72 buys in 1949: the 1929 dollar
lost 28.2% of its purchasing power over
these 20 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.39: $1,000 becomes
$1,392, and $10,000 becomes $13,918.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.39
$5.00
$6.96
$10.00
$13.92
$20.00
$27.84
$50.00
$69.59
$100
$139
$500
$696
$1,000
$1,392
$5,000
$6,959
$10,000
$13,918
$100,000
$139,181
$1,000,000
$1,391,813
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1949
Between 1929 and 1949, apparel rose the most, up 65.2%, while food rose the least, up 51.5%, against 39.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.67%
$139
Apparel
2.54%
$165
Food
2.10%
$152
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 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1949 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
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$139
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $81.29 by
1939, on its way to $139 in 1949; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 14.4% in 1947, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $139; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1949: $100 is worth $139 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1949/