Between 1933 and 1990, the Consumer Price Index went from 13 to 130.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 905.4%, which works out to an average of
4.13% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1933 bought what
$0.10 buys in 1990.
Consumer prices fell 5.1% in 1933, a smaller decline than 1932’s
but enough to complete a four-year slide of 24.0% from the 1929
peak. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the trough of that
contraction to March 1933, closing out the longest downturn in its
chronology, one that had run 43 months since August 1929. The bottom
arrived alongside a change in government: Franklin D. Roosevelt was
inaugurated March 4 and, within 48 hours, ordered every bank in the country
closed to halt a fresh round of runs. Congress passed the Emergency Banking
Act on March 9, letting solvent banks reopen under federal supervision, and
the panic that had been building for months broke almost immediately. The
administration moved on the currency next: Executive Order 6102, issued
April 5, required Americans to turn in most gold coin, bullion, and
certificates to the Federal Reserve, taking the country off the domestic
gold standard (formal devaluation of the dollar followed the next January).
Congress capped the year’s banking overhaul in June with the Banking Act of
1933, commonly called Glass-Steagall, which created the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation and separated commercial banking from investment
banking. Even after four straight years of falling prices, the CPI still
stood 31.3% above its 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1933 spending costs in 1990, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1933 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.13%
$1,005
Food
4.56%
$1,273
Apparel
3.37%
$660
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1933: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1990
In 1990, the median U.S. household earned about $29,900, gas averaged $1.15 a
gallon, and mailing a letter cost a quarter. Inflation ran hot at 5.4% for the
year, its highest rate since 1982, pushed up by an oil shock after Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, and the economy tipped into recession that summer. It was
the last gasp of elevated inflation before the long calm of the 1990s.
MLA: “Inflation from 1933 to 1990: $100 is worth $1,005 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1933-to-1990/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1933 to 1990. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1933-to-1990/