$100 in 1930 is worth $160 in 1955,
because prices increased 60.5% over that period, an average of
1.91% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$160
in 1955
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
60.5%
Average inflation rate
1.91% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$160
Price difference ($100 base)
$60.48
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1955
26.8
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
$100 in 1930 → 1955
$160
$100 in 1955 → 1930
$62.31
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1955
Between 1930 and 1955, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 26.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 60.5%, which works out to an average of
1.91% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.62 buys in 1955: the 1930 dollar
lost 37.7% of its purchasing power over
these 25 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 1955 at the same ratio, 1.60: $1,000 becomes
$1,605, and $10,000 becomes $16,048.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1955
$1.00
$1.60
$5.00
$8.02
$10.00
$16.05
$20.00
$32.10
$50.00
$80.24
$100
$160
$500
$802
$1,000
$1,605
$5,000
$8,024
$10,000
$16,048
$100,000
$160,479
$1,000,000
$1,604,790
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1955
Between 1930 and 1955, food rose the most, up 78.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 77.3%, against 60.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1955, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.91%
$160
Food
2.34%
$178
Apparel
2.32%
$177
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 1955
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 1930–1955 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
1950–1955
2.15%
11.2%
$160
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $97.60 by
1942, on its way to $160 in 1955; 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 1955, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $160; the year's average CPI of 26.8 is the level
behind every 1955 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the first annual decline since 1949,
as a strong rebound from the 1953-54 recession delivered growth without
much price pressure; automakers and appliance makers competed hard on
price for a booming consumer market. Organized labor consolidated that
December, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations merged on the 5th under President George Meany,
uniting roughly 15 million workers in the AFL-CIO after two decades as
rival federations. That same day, a different kind of organizing began in
Montgomery, Alabama: four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing
to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, the city’s Black community
began a boycott of its buses that would last more than a year and help
launch the civil rights movement’s mass phase. Markets got a scare that
September: news of Eisenhower’s heart attack on the 24th sent the Dow
Jones Industrial Average to its steepest one-day drop since the 1929
crash when trading resumed that Monday, before stocks recovered as the
president’s health improved. Consumer prices finished 1955 170.7% above
their 1913 level, essentially unchanged from where they
stood a year earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1955: $100 is worth $160 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1955/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1955. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1955/