$100 in 1931 is worth $191 in 1959,
because prices increased 91.4% over that period, an average of
2.35% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$191
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
91.4%
Average inflation rate
2.35% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$191
Price difference ($100 base)
$91.45
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1931 → 1959
$191
$100 in 1959 → 1931
$52.23
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1959
Between 1931 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 91.4%, which works out to an average of
2.35% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$0.52 buys in 1959: the 1931 dollar
lost 47.8% of its purchasing power over
these 28 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 1959 at the same ratio, 1.91: $1,000 becomes
$1,914, and $10,000 becomes $19,145.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.91
$5.00
$9.57
$10.00
$19.14
$20.00
$38.29
$50.00
$95.72
$100
$191
$500
$957
$1,000
$1,914
$5,000
$9,572
$10,000
$19,145
$100,000
$191,447
$1,000,000
$1,914,474
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1959
Between 1931 and 1959, food rose the most, up 130.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 104.5%, against 91.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.35%
$191
Food
3.02%
$230
Apparel
2.59%
$205
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 1959
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.9% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1931–1959 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1931, at end
1931–1940
-0.91%
-7.9%
$92.11
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$159
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$191
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $118 by
1945, on its way to $191 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 1931 had the buying
power of $191; 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 1931 to 1959: $100 is worth $191 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1959/