$100 in 1929 is worth $195 in 1967,
because prices increased 95.3% over that period, an average of
1.78% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$195
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
95.3%
Average inflation rate
1.78% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$195
Price difference ($100 base)
$95.32
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1929 → 1967
$195
$100 in 1967 → 1929
$51.20
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1967
Between 1929 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 95.3%, which works out to an average of
1.78% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.51 buys in 1967: the 1929 dollar
lost 48.8% of its purchasing power over
these 38 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 1967 at the same ratio, 1.95: $1,000 becomes
$1,953, and $10,000 becomes $19,532.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.95
$5.00
$9.77
$10.00
$19.53
$20.00
$39.06
$50.00
$97.66
$100
$195
$500
$977
$1,000
$1,953
$5,000
$9,766
$10,000
$19,532
$100,000
$195,322
$1,000,000
$1,953,216
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1967
Between 1929 and 1967, food rose the most, up 106.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 106.5%, against 95.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.78%
$195
Food
1.93%
$207
Apparel
1.93%
$206
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 1967
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 1929–1967 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
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$195
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $130 by
1947, on its way to $195 in 1967; 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: 1967
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $195; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1967: $100 is worth $195 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1967/