$100 in 1929 is worth $204 in 1968,
because prices increased 103.5% over that period, an average of
1.84% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$204
in 1968
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
103.5%
Average inflation rate
1.84% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$204
Price difference ($100 base)
$104
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1968
34.8
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
$100 in 1929 → 1968
$204
$100 in 1968 → 1929
$49.14
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1968
Between 1929 and 1968, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 34.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 103.5%, which works out to an average of
1.84% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.49 buys in 1968: the 1929 dollar
lost 50.9% of its purchasing power over
these 39 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 1968 at the same ratio, 2.04: $1,000 becomes
$2,035, and $10,000 becomes $20,351.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1968
$1.00
$2.04
$5.00
$10.18
$10.00
$20.35
$20.00
$40.70
$50.00
$102
$100
$204
$500
$1,018
$1,000
$2,035
$5,000
$10,175
$10,000
$20,351
$100,000
$203,509
$1,000,000
$2,035,088
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1968
Between 1929 and 1968, apparel rose the most, up 117.4%, while food rose the least, up 113.9%, against 103.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1968, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.84%
$204
Apparel
2.01%
$217
Food
1.97%
$214
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 1968
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 1929–1968 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
1960–1968
2.04%
17.6%
$204
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $139 by
1949, on its way to $204 in 1968; 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: 1968
In 1968, prices rose 4.2% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $204; the year's average CPI of 34.8 is the level
behind every 1968 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in 1968, up sharply from 1967’s
3.1% and the fastest pace in 17 years, as Vietnam War spending and a tight
labor market pushed inflation higher despite the Federal Reserve’s
earlier tightening. The year was marked by political violence: Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis on April
4, touching off rioting in more than 100 cities, and Robert F. Kennedy was
shot in Los Angeles on June 5, moments after winning California’s
Democratic presidential primary, and died the next day. Washington tried
to answer the inflation problem directly that June 28, when Congress
passed a 10% income tax surcharge, the Revenue and Expenditure Control
Act, temporarily raising taxes and cutting spending to cool an economy
overheated by war and Great Society outlays; prices kept accelerating
anyway. The cost of living rose in smaller, more visible ways too:
first-class postage climbed to 6 cents that January 7, and the minimum
wage rose to $1.60 an hour that February 1, the final step of the
increase Congress had set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1968 251.5% above their 1913 level.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1968: $100 is worth $204 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1968/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1968. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1968/