$100 in 1930 is worth $83.23 in 1939,
because prices declined 16.8% over that period, an average of
2.02% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$83.23
in 1939
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-16.8%
Average inflation rate
-2.02% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$83.23
Price difference ($100 base)
-$16.77
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1939
13.9
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1939
-1.42%
$100 in 1930 → 1939
$83.23
$100 in 1939 → 1930
$120
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1939
Between 1930 and 1939, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 13.9.
Cumulatively, prices declined 16.8%, which works out to an average of
-2.02% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$1.20 buys in 1939: the 1930 dollar
gained 20.1% in purchasing power over
these 9 years.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
Every 1930 amount converts to 1939 at the same ratio, 0.83: $1,000 becomes
$832, and $10,000 becomes $8,323.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1939
$1.00
$0.83
$5.00
$4.16
$10.00
$8.32
$20.00
$16.65
$50.00
$41.62
$100
$83.23
$500
$416
$1,000
$832
$5,000
$4,162
$10,000
$8,323
$100,000
$83,234
$1,000,000
$832,335
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1939
Every category fell between 1930 and 1939: food the most, down 24.4%, and apparel the least, down 10.7%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1939, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
-2.02%
$83.23
Apparel
-1.25%
$89.26
Food
-3.05%
$75.64
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1930: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $80.24 by
1934, on its way to $83.23 in 1939; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.6% in 1937, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1939, prices fell 1.4% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $83.23; the year's average CPI of 13.9 is the level
behind every 1939 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.4% in 1939, closing out a decade in which the CPI
fell in six years and rose in four, leaving prices 18.7% below their
1929 level even after the mid-decade recovery. Measured
against the start of the CPI’s modern record, prices still stood 40.4%
above their 1913 level, a reminder that even a decade defined
by deflation left the cost of living well above where it had been a
generation earlier. The decade’s final months reset the economic picture
entirely. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France
declared war two days later; the United States stayed formally neutral
under the Neutrality Acts, but Allied orders for war materiel began flowing
to American factories almost immediately, a demand shock that would do more
to end the Depression over the next few years than any peacetime relief
program had managed. Domestic policy kept building on the New Deal’s
framework, too: the federal minimum wage rose to 30 cents an hour that
October, the second step in the schedule set by the 1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act. Amid it all, the New York World’s Fair opened April 30 in
Queens, themed “The World of Tomorrow” and drawing tens of millions of
visitors with exhibits on television and other technologies promising a
more prosperous decade than the one just ending. First-class postage held
at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1939: $100 is worth $83.23 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1939/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1939. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1939/