$100 in 1931 is worth $118 in 1945,
because prices increased 18.4% over that period, an average of
1.22% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$118
in 1945
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
18.4%
Average inflation rate
1.22% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$118
Price difference ($100 base)
$18.42
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1945
18
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1945
2.27%
$100 in 1931 → 1945
$118
$100 in 1945 → 1931
$84.44
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1945
Between 1931 and 1945, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 18.
Cumulatively, prices increased 18.4%, which works out to an average of
1.22% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$0.84 buys in 1945: the 1931 dollar
lost 15.6% of its purchasing power over
these 14 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 1945 at the same ratio, 1.18: $1,000 becomes
$1,184, and $10,000 becomes $11,842.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1945
$1.00
$1.18
$5.00
$5.92
$10.00
$11.84
$20.00
$23.68
$50.00
$59.21
$100
$118
$500
$592
$1,000
$1,184
$5,000
$5,921
$10,000
$11,842
$100,000
$118,421
$1,000,000
$1,184,211
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1945
Between 1931 and 1945, apparel rose the most, up 42.7%, while food rose the least, up 34.1%, against 18.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1945, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.22%
$118
Apparel
2.57%
$143
Food
2.12%
$134
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–).
Decade by decade: 1931 to 1945
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.15% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.9% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1931–1945 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1931, at end
1931–1940
-0.91%
-7.9%
$92.11
1940–1945
5.15%
28.6%
$118
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $92.76 by
1938, on its way to $118 in 1945; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 10.9% in 1942, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1945, prices rose 2.3% and $100 from 1931 had the buying
power of $118; the year's average CPI of 18 is the level
behind every 1945 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.3% in 1945, up from 1944’s 1.7% but
still modest, a rate that understated how much pressure had built up behind
wartime price and wage controls, which stayed largely in place even as the
conflict that justified them came to a close. The year opened with a shock
at home: Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, less
than three months into an unprecedented fourth term, and Vice President
Harry Truman was sworn in that same afternoon. The war Roosevelt had led for
nearly four years ended without him. Germany surrendered on May 8, and
Japan surrendered on August 15, after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that month, with the formal signing aboard the USS Missouri on
September 2. Domestic policy kept moving even as the guns fell silent: the
federal minimum wage rose to 40 cents an hour that October 24, the final
step of the schedule Congress had built into the 1938 Fair Labor Standards
Act, up from 30 cents in 1939 and 25 cents at the law’s start. Consumer
prices stood 81.8% above their 1913 level, a gain that would
look modest next to what followed once wartime controls actually came off.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1931 to 1945: $100 is worth $118 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1945/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1945. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1945/