$100 in 1930 is worth $159 in 1952,
because prices increased 58.7% over that period, an average of
2.12% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$159
in 1952
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
58.7%
Average inflation rate
2.12% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$159
Price difference ($100 base)
$58.68
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1952
26.5
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
$100 in 1930 → 1952
$159
$100 in 1952 → 1930
$63.02
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1952
Between 1930 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 58.7%, which works out to an average of
2.12% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.63 buys in 1952: the 1930 dollar
lost 37.0% of its purchasing power over
these 22 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 1952 at the same ratio, 1.59: $1,000 becomes
$1,587, and $10,000 becomes $15,868.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1952
$1.00
$1.59
$5.00
$7.93
$10.00
$15.87
$20.00
$31.74
$50.00
$79.34
$100
$159
$500
$793
$1,000
$1,587
$5,000
$7,934
$10,000
$15,868
$100,000
$158,683
$1,000,000
$1,586,826
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1952
Between 1930 and 1952, food rose the most, up 84.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 79.8%, against 58.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.12%
$159
Food
2.81%
$184
Apparel
2.70%
$180
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 1952
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1930–1952 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1930, at end
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$83.83
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$144
1950–1952
4.86%
10.0%
$159
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $88.02 by
1941, on its way to $159 in 1952; 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 1952, prices rose 1.9% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $159; the year's average CPI of 26.5 is the level
behind every 1952 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.9% in 1952, down sharply from 1951’s
7.9% as the price and wage controls imposed the year before held the cost
of living in check even with the Korean War still underway. Labor strife
tested those controls that spring: to head off a strike that could have
disrupted war production, President Truman ordered the government to
seize the steel industry that April, over the objections of steel
companies fighting the price the Office of Price Stabilization had set for
their product. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that June, a landmark limit on
presidential power, and steelworkers then struck for 53 days before a
settlement. Politics delivered the year’s biggest change that November:
Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, promising to “go to Korea” to
end the war and returning Republicans to the White House for the first
time since 1933. The Cold War’s technological edge sharpened that same
month, when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak
Atoll on November 1, a device hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945. Consumer prices finished 1952
167.7% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1952: $100 is worth $159 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1952/