$100 in 1931 is worth $88.16 in 1934,
because prices declined 11.8% over that period, an average of
4.11% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$88.16
in 1934
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-11.8%
Average inflation rate
-4.11% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$88.16
Price difference ($100 base)
-$11.84
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1934
13.4
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1934
3.08%
$100 in 1931 → 1934
$88.16
$100 in 1934 → 1931
$113
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1934
Between 1931 and 1934, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 13.4.
Cumulatively, prices declined 11.8%, which works out to an average of
-4.11% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$1.13 buys in 1934: the 1931 dollar
gained 13.4% in purchasing power over
these 3 years.
Consumer prices fell 9.0% in 1931, a sharp acceleration from the 2.3% decline
in 1930, as falling wages, collapsing farm prices, and a fresh
wave of bank failures fed a downward spiral that the still-contracting
economy could not shake. More than 2,000 banks failed during the year, far
more than in 1930, as depositors who had watched earlier banks go under
pulled their cash out of ones they feared were next. The crisis went
international that September, when Britain suspended the gold standard amid
a run on sterling. The Federal Reserve’s response made the domestic downturn
worse before it made anything better: to defend the dollar’s own gold
backing, the Fed raised its discount rate sharply that October, in two steps
from 1.5% to 3.5%, tightening credit at the exact moment the economy needed
the opposite. Not every headline that year was grim. The Empire State
Building opened its doors on May 1, briefly the tallest building in the
world, though so much of Manhattan’s office space sat vacant amid the
Depression that tenants stayed scarce and New Yorkers took to calling it the
“Empty State Building.” Consumer prices had now fallen for two straight
years and stood 53.5% above their 1913 level, down from the
68.7% margin of just twelve months before. First-class postage remained at 2
cents.
Every 1931 amount converts to 1934 at the same ratio, 0.88: $1,000 becomes
$882, and $10,000 becomes $8,816.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1934
$1.00
$0.88
$5.00
$4.41
$10.00
$8.82
$20.00
$17.63
$50.00
$44.08
$100
$88.16
$500
$441
$1,000
$882
$5,000
$4,408
$10,000
$8,816
$100,000
$88,158
$1,000,000
$881,579
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1934
Every category fell between 1931 and 1934: food the most, down 10.1%, and apparel the least, down 6.4%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1934, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
-4.11%
$88.16
Apparel
-2.17%
$93.64
Food
-3.48%
$89.92
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1931: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $90.13 by
1932, on its way to $88.16 in 1934; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.1% in 1934, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1934, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1931 had the buying
power of $88.16; the year's average CPI of 13.4 is the level
behind every 1934 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1934, the first annual increase since 1926;
every year from 1927 through 1933 had been flat or falling,
so the turn marked a real break after eight years without a single gain.
Currency policy did some of the work. The Gold Reserve Act, signed January
30, formally devalued the dollar by raising the official price of gold from
$20.67 to $35 an ounce, part of the administration’s deliberate effort to
reflate prices after four straight years of deflation. Financial regulation
tightened at the same time: the Securities Exchange Act of June 6 created
the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock exchanges and enforce
disclosure rules, a direct response to the speculation blamed for the 1929
crash. The recovery was fragile and unevenly felt, especially on the Great
Plains, where drought had turned overplowed farmland to dust. Over May 9-11,
high winds lifted an estimated 350 million tons of topsoil into the air,
darkening skies as far away as Washington and New York and giving city
readers who had never seen a wheat field a first glimpse of the disaster
building in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Consumer prices stood 35.4% above
their 1913 level, still well below the 1929 peak but rising
for the first time since the Depression began. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1931 to 1934: $100 is worth $88.16 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1934/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1934. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1934/