$100 in 1931 is worth $195 in 1960,
because prices increased 94.7% over that period, an average of
2.32% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$195
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
94.7%
Average inflation rate
2.32% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$195
Price difference ($100 base)
$94.74
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1931 → 1960
$195
$100 in 1960 → 1931
$51.35
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1960
Between 1931 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 94.7%, which works out to an average of
2.32% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$0.51 buys in 1960: the 1931 dollar
lost 48.6% of its purchasing power over
these 29 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.95: $1,000 becomes
$1,947, and $10,000 becomes $19,474.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.95
$5.00
$9.74
$10.00
$19.47
$20.00
$38.95
$50.00
$97.37
$100
$195
$500
$974
$1,000
$1,947
$5,000
$9,737
$10,000
$19,474
$100,000
$194,737
$1,000,000
$1,947,368
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1960
Between 1931 and 1960, food rose the most, up 132.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 107.7%, against 94.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.32%
$195
Food
2.95%
$233
Apparel
2.55%
$208
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 1960
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 1931–1960 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
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$195
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $118 by
1945, on its way to $195 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 1931 had the buying
power of $195; 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 1931 to 1960: $100 is worth $195 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1960/