$100 in 1930 is worth $177 in 1960,
because prices increased 77.2% over that period, an average of
1.93% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$177
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
77.2%
Average inflation rate
1.93% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$177
Price difference ($100 base)
$77.25
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1930 → 1960
$177
$100 in 1960 → 1930
$56.42
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1960
Between 1930 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 77.2%, which works out to an average of
1.93% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.56 buys in 1960: the 1930 dollar
lost 43.6% of its purchasing power over
these 30 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.77: $1,000 becomes
$1,772, and $10,000 becomes $17,725.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.77
$5.00
$8.86
$10.00
$17.72
$20.00
$35.45
$50.00
$88.62
$100
$177
$500
$886
$1,000
$1,772
$5,000
$8,862
$10,000
$17,725
$100,000
$177,246
$1,000,000
$1,772,455
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1960
Between 1930 and 1960, food rose the most, up 92.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 88.8%, against 77.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.93%
$177
Food
2.20%
$192
Apparel
2.14%
$189
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 1960
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 1930–1960 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
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$177
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $108 by
1945, on its way to $177 in 1960; 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 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $177; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1960: $100 is worth $177 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1960/