$100 in 1929 is worth $159 in 1956,
because prices increased 59.1% over that period, an average of
1.73% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$159
in 1956
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
59.1%
Average inflation rate
1.73% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$159
Price difference ($100 base)
$59.06
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1956
27.2
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1956
1.49%
$100 in 1929 → 1956
$159
$100 in 1956 → 1929
$62.87
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1956
Between 1929 and 1956, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 27.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 59.1%, which works out to an average of
1.73% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.63 buys in 1956: the 1929 dollar
lost 37.1% of its purchasing power over
these 27 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 1956 at the same ratio, 1.59: $1,000 becomes
$1,591, and $10,000 becomes $15,906.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1956
$1.00
$1.59
$5.00
$7.95
$10.00
$15.91
$20.00
$31.81
$50.00
$79.53
$100
$159
$500
$795
$1,000
$1,591
$5,000
$7,953
$10,000
$15,906
$100,000
$159,064
$1,000,000
$1,590,643
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1956
Between 1929 and 1956, apparel rose the most, up 76.9%, while food rose the least, up 69.7%, against 59.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1956, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.73%
$159
Apparel
2.14%
$177
Food
1.98%
$170
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 1956
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1956 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$141
1950–1956
2.04%
12.9%
$159
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $95.32 by
1942, on its way to $159 in 1956; 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 1956, prices rose 1.5% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $159; the year's average CPI of 27.2 is the level
behind every 1956 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1956, a return to mild inflation after they had
fallen 0.4% in 1955, the only annual decline of the decade. The two years sat
in the calmest stretch of the postwar index, a lull between the Korean War
price surge earlier in the 1950s and the acceleration that would return in
the 1970s. Congress had already raised the wage floor into that calm: the
Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1955, signed the previous August, took
effect March 1 and lifted the federal minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an
hour, the first increase since 1950. Eisenhower signed a longer-lasting
commitment on June 29, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, funding 41,000 miles of
controlled-access highway at 90% federal cost to build the Interstate
System, the largest public-works program the country had undertaken. He won
a second term that November, carrying 41 states and about 57% of the
popular vote in a rematch against Adlai Stevenson. Abroad, the Suez Crisis
broke the calm on the supply side: Egypt nationalized the canal on July 26,
and after Israel invaded the Sinai on October 29 with British and French
forces following, the canal’s closure and damaged pipelines squeezed oil
shipments to Western Europe for months. Consumer prices stood 174.7% above
their 1913 level by 1956, up 94% since 1940
alone, even after a decade that had barely moved the index. First-class
postage held at 3 cents, unchanged since 1932.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1956: $100 is worth $159 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1956/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1956. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1956/