$100 in 1930 is worth $143 in 1949,
because prices increased 42.5% over that period, an average of
1.88% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$143
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
42.5%
Average inflation rate
1.88% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$143
Price difference ($100 base)
$42.51
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1930 → 1949
$143
$100 in 1949 → 1930
$70.17
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1949
Between 1930 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 42.5%, which works out to an average of
1.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.70 buys in 1949: the 1930 dollar
lost 29.8% of its purchasing power over
these 19 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.43: $1,000 becomes
$1,425, and $10,000 becomes $14,251.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.43
$5.00
$7.13
$10.00
$14.25
$20.00
$28.50
$50.00
$71.26
$100
$143
$500
$713
$1,000
$1,425
$5,000
$7,126
$10,000
$14,251
$100,000
$142,515
$1,000,000
$1,425,150
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1949
Between 1930 and 1949, apparel rose the most, up 68.6%, while food rose the least, up 60.3%, against 42.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.88%
$143
Apparel
2.79%
$169
Food
2.51%
$160
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 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1930–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1930, at end
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$83.83
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$143
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $83.23 by
1939, on its way to $143 in 1949; 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.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $143; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1949: $100 is worth $143 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1949/