$100 in 1930 is worth $105 in 1944,
because prices increased 5.4% over that period, an average of
0.38% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$105
in 1944
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
5.4%
Average inflation rate
0.38% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$105
Price difference ($100 base)
$5.39
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1944
17.6
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1944
1.73%
$100 in 1930 → 1944
$105
$100 in 1944 → 1930
$94.89
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1944
Between 1930 and 1944, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 17.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 5.4%, which works out to an average of
0.38% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.95 buys in 1944: the 1930 dollar
lost 5.1% of its purchasing power over
these 14 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 1944 at the same ratio, 1.05: $1,000 becomes
$1,054, and $10,000 becomes $10,539.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1944
$1.00
$1.05
$5.00
$5.27
$10.00
$10.54
$20.00
$21.08
$50.00
$52.69
$100
$105
$500
$527
$1,000
$1,054
$5,000
$5,269
$10,000
$10,539
$100,000
$105,389
$1,000,000
$1,053,892
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1944
Between 1930 and 1944, apparel rose the most, up 23.1%, while food rose the least, up 8.3%, against 5.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1944, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.38%
$105
Apparel
1.50%
$123
Food
0.57%
$108
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–).
Decade by decade: 1930 to 1944
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.89% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1930–1944 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1930, at end
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$83.83
1940–1944
5.89%
25.7%
$105
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $86.23 by
1937, on its way to $105 in 1944; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 10.9% in 1942, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1944, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $105; the year's average CPI of 17.6 is the level
behind every 1944 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose just 1.7% in 1944, down from 1943’s
6.1% and the slowest increase of the war years, as price and wage controls
held the cost of living nearly flat even as the conflict reached its most
expensive phase. The war itself turned decisively that June, when more than
150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, opening the
long-planned second front against Nazi Germany. Congress used the same
month to plan for the war’s end, passing the GI Bill on June 22 to give
returning veterans money for college or vocational training, low-cost home
and business loans, and unemployment benefits, a package that would reshape
American housing and higher education for a generation. The following
month, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered at Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, and agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, itself
pegged to gold, creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
to manage the new system. Consumer prices stood 77.8% above their
1913 level, a cumulative wartime rise held down by controls
that would start unwinding the following year. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1944: $100 is worth $105 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1944/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1944. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1944/