$100 in 1931 is worth $91.45 in 1939,
because prices declined 8.6% over that period, an average of
1.11% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$91.45
in 1939
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-8.6%
Average inflation rate
-1.11% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$91.45
Price difference ($100 base)
-$8.55
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1939
13.9
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1939
-1.42%
$100 in 1931 → 1939
$91.45
$100 in 1939 → 1931
$109
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1939
Between 1931 and 1939, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 13.9.
Cumulatively, prices declined 8.6%, which works out to an average of
-1.11% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$1.09 buys in 1939: the 1931 dollar
gained 9.4% in purchasing power over
these 8 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 1939 at the same ratio, 0.91: $1,000 becomes
$914, and $10,000 becomes $9,145.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1939
$1.00
$0.91
$5.00
$4.57
$10.00
$9.14
$20.00
$18.29
$50.00
$45.72
$100
$91.45
$500
$457
$1,000
$914
$5,000
$4,572
$10,000
$9,145
$100,000
$91,447
$1,000,000
$914,474
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1939
Every category fell between 1931 and 1939: food the most, down 8.5%, and apparel the least, down 1.8%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1939, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.11%
$91.45
Apparel
-0.23%
$98.18
Food
-1.11%
$91.47
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
1935, on its way to $91.45 in 1939; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.6% in 1937, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1939, prices fell 1.4% and $100 from 1931 had the buying
power of $91.45; the year's average CPI of 13.9 is the level
behind every 1939 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.4% in 1939, closing out a decade in which the CPI
fell in six years and rose in four, leaving prices 18.7% below their
1929 level even after the mid-decade recovery. Measured
against the start of the CPI’s modern record, prices still stood 40.4%
above their 1913 level, a reminder that even a decade defined
by deflation left the cost of living well above where it had been a
generation earlier. The decade’s final months reset the economic picture
entirely. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France
declared war two days later; the United States stayed formally neutral
under the Neutrality Acts, but Allied orders for war materiel began flowing
to American factories almost immediately, a demand shock that would do more
to end the Depression over the next few years than any peacetime relief
program had managed. Domestic policy kept building on the New Deal’s
framework, too: the federal minimum wage rose to 30 cents an hour that
October, the second step in the schedule set by the 1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act. Amid it all, the New York World’s Fair opened April 30 in
Queens, themed “The World of Tomorrow” and drawing tens of millions of
visitors with exhibits on television and other technologies promising a
more prosperous decade than the one just ending. First-class postage held
at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1931 to 1939: $100 is worth $91.45 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1939/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1939. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1939/