$100 in 1929 is worth $1,514 in 2020,
because prices increased 1413.5% over that period, an average of
3.03% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$1,514
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1413.5%
Average inflation rate
3.03% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,514
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,414
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1929 → 2020
$1,514
$100 in 2020 → 1929
$6.61
What happened to prices between 1929 and 2020
Between 1929 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1413.5%, which works out to an average of
3.03% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.07 buys in 2020: the 1929 dollar
lost 93.4% of its purchasing power over
these 91 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 2020 at the same ratio, 15.14: $1,000 becomes
$15,135, and $10,000 becomes $151,351.
Amount in 1929
Value in 2020
$1.00
$15.14
$5.00
$75.68
$10.00
$151
$20.00
$303
$50.00
$757
$100
$1,514
$500
$7,568
$1,000
$15,135
$5,000
$75,676
$10,000
$151,351
$100,000
$1,513,515
$1,000,000
$15,135,146
Inflation by spending category, 1929–2020
Between 1929 and 2020, food rose the most, up 1519.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 378.1%, against 1413.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.03%
$1,514
Food
3.11%
$1,620
Apparel
1.73%
$478
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 2020
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–2020 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$227
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$482
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$764
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,007
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,275
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,514
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $288 by
1974, on its way to $1,514 in 2020; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $1,514; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 2020: $100 is worth $1,514 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2020/