$100 in 1929 is worth $170 in 1959,
because prices increased 70.2% over that period, an average of
1.79% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$170
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
70.2%
Average inflation rate
1.79% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$170
Price difference ($100 base)
$70.18
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1929 → 1959
$170
$100 in 1959 → 1929
$58.76
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1959
Between 1929 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 70.2%, which works out to an average of
1.79% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.59 buys in 1959: the 1929 dollar
lost 41.2% of its purchasing power over
these 30 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 1959 at the same ratio, 1.70: $1,000 becomes
$1,702, and $10,000 becomes $17,018.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.70
$5.00
$8.51
$10.00
$17.02
$20.00
$34.04
$50.00
$85.09
$100
$170
$500
$851
$1,000
$1,702
$5,000
$8,509
$10,000
$17,018
$100,000
$170,175
$1,000,000
$1,701,754
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1959
Between 1929 and 1959, apparel rose the most, up 82.2%, while food rose the least, up 80.0%, against 70.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.79%
$170
Apparel
2.02%
$182
Food
1.98%
$180
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 1959
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 1929–1959 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
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$170
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $103 by
1944, on its way to $170 in 1959; 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 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $170; the year's average CPI of 29.1 is the level
behind every 1959 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1959: $100 is worth $170 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1959/