$100 in 1930 is worth $174 in 1959,
because prices increased 74.3% over that period, an average of
1.93% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$174
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
74.3%
Average inflation rate
1.93% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$174
Price difference ($100 base)
$74.25
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1930 → 1959
$174
$100 in 1959 → 1930
$57.39
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1959
Between 1930 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 74.3%, which works out to an average of
1.93% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.57 buys in 1959: the 1930 dollar
lost 42.6% of its purchasing power over
these 29 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 1959 at the same ratio, 1.74: $1,000 becomes
$1,743, and $10,000 becomes $17,425.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.74
$5.00
$8.71
$10.00
$17.43
$20.00
$34.85
$50.00
$87.13
$100
$174
$500
$871
$1,000
$1,743
$5,000
$8,713
$10,000
$17,425
$100,000
$174,251
$1,000,000
$1,742,515
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1959
Between 1930 and 1959, food rose the most, up 90.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 86.0%, against 74.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.93%
$174
Food
2.25%
$190
Apparel
2.16%
$186
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 1959
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 1930–1959 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
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$174
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $105 by
1944, on its way to $174 in 1959; 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 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $174; the year's average CPI of 29.1 is the level
behind every 1959 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1959: $100 is worth $174 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1959/