$100 in 1931 is worth $635 in 1982,
because prices increased 534.9% over that period, an average of
3.69% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$635
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
534.9%
Average inflation rate
3.69% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$635
Price difference ($100 base)
$535
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1931 → 1982
$635
$100 in 1982 → 1931
$15.75
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1982
Between 1931 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 534.9%, which works out to an average of
3.69% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$0.16 buys in 1982: the 1931 dollar
lost 84.2% of its purchasing power over
these 51 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 1982 at the same ratio, 6.35: $1,000 becomes
$6,349, and $10,000 becomes $63,487.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1982
$1.00
$6.35
$5.00
$31.74
$10.00
$63.49
$20.00
$127
$50.00
$317
$100
$635
$500
$3,174
$1,000
$6,349
$5,000
$31,743
$10,000
$63,487
$100,000
$634,868
$1,000,000
$6,348,684
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1982
Between 1931 and 1982, food rose the most, up 655.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 344.5%, against 534.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.69%
$635
Food
4.04%
$755
Apparel
2.97%
$445
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 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.9% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1931–1982 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$255
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$542
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$635
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $185 by
1957, on its way to $635 in 1982; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1931 had the buying
power of $635; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1931 to 1982: $100 is worth $635 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1982/