$100 in 1929 is worth $173 in 1960,
because prices increased 73.1% over that period, an average of
1.79% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$173
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
73.1%
Average inflation rate
1.79% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$173
Price difference ($100 base)
$73.10
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1929 → 1960
$173
$100 in 1960 → 1929
$57.77
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1960
Between 1929 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 73.1%, which works out to an average of
1.79% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.58 buys in 1960: the 1929 dollar
lost 42.2% of its purchasing power over
these 31 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.73: $1,000 becomes
$1,731, and $10,000 becomes $17,310.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.73
$5.00
$8.65
$10.00
$17.31
$20.00
$34.62
$50.00
$86.55
$100
$173
$500
$865
$1,000
$1,731
$5,000
$8,655
$10,000
$17,310
$100,000
$173,099
$1,000,000
$1,730,994
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1960
Between 1929 and 1960, apparel rose the most, up 85.0%, while food rose the least, up 81.8%, against 73.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.79%
$173
Apparel
2.00%
$185
Food
1.95%
$182
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 1960
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 1929–1960 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
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$173
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $105 by
1945, on its way to $173 in 1960; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1960
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $173; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1960: $100 is worth $173 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1960/