$100 in 1929 is worth $175 in 1961,
because prices increased 74.9% over that period, an average of
1.76% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$175
in 1961
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
74.9%
Average inflation rate
1.76% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$175
Price difference ($100 base)
$74.85
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1961
29.9
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1961
1.01%
$100 in 1929 → 1961
$175
$100 in 1961 → 1929
$57.19
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1961
Between 1929 and 1961, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 29.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 74.9%, which works out to an average of
1.76% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.57 buys in 1961: the 1929 dollar
lost 42.8% of its purchasing power over
these 32 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 1961 at the same ratio, 1.75: $1,000 becomes
$1,749, and $10,000 becomes $17,485.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1961
$1.00
$1.75
$5.00
$8.74
$10.00
$17.49
$20.00
$34.97
$50.00
$87.43
$100
$175
$500
$874
$1,000
$1,749
$5,000
$8,743
$10,000
$17,485
$100,000
$174,854
$1,000,000
$1,748,538
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1961
Between 1929 and 1961, apparel rose the most, up 86.6%, while food rose the least, up 84.2%, against 74.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1961, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.76%
$175
Apparel
1.97%
$187
Food
1.93%
$184
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 1961
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 1929–1961 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
1960–1961
1.01%
1.0%
$175
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $105 by
1945, on its way to $175 in 1961; 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: 1961
In 1961, prices rose 1.0% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $175; the year's average CPI of 29.9 is the level
behind every 1961 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.0% in 1961, down from 1960’s 1.7% as
the economy climbed out of recession, a recovery the National Bureau of
Economic Research dates to that February. Politically, the year opened
with a changing of the guard: outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower’s
farewell address on January 17 warned of a growing “military-industrial
complex,” and three days later John F. Kennedy was sworn in, urging
Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you.” The new
administration’s first major foreign-policy test came quickly and badly:
a CIA-organized force of Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs on April
17 aiming to topple Fidel Castro, and without the U.S. air support Kennedy
withheld, the invasion collapsed within three days. Cold War tensions
hardened further that August, when East German forces sealed the border
between East and West Berlin overnight, building what would become the
Berlin Wall and stopping the flow of refugees to the West. Domestically,
the wage floor moved for the first time in five years: the Fair Labor
Standards Amendments of 1961, effective that September, raised the
minimum wage to $1.15 an hour and extended coverage to roughly 3.6 million
additional workers. Consumer prices finished 1961 202.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1961: $100 is worth $175 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1961/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1961. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1961/