$100 in 1934 is worth $217 in 1959,
because prices increased 117.2% over that period, an average of
3.15% a year.
$100 in 1934 has
the same buying power as
$217
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
117.2%
Average inflation rate
3.15% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$217
Price difference ($100 base)
$117
CPI in 1934
13.4
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1934
3.08%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1934 → 1959
$217
$100 in 1959 → 1934
$46.05
What happened to prices between 1934 and 1959
Between 1934 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.4 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 117.2%, which works out to an average of
3.15% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1934 bought what
$0.46 buys in 1959: the 1934 dollar
lost 54.0% of its purchasing power over
these 25 years.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1934, the first annual increase since 1926;
every year from 1927 through 1933 had been flat or falling,
so the turn marked a real break after eight years without a single gain.
Currency policy did some of the work. The Gold Reserve Act, signed January
30, formally devalued the dollar by raising the official price of gold from
$20.67 to $35 an ounce, part of the administration’s deliberate effort to
reflate prices after four straight years of deflation. Financial regulation
tightened at the same time: the Securities Exchange Act of June 6 created
the Securities and Exchange Commission to police stock exchanges and enforce
disclosure rules, a direct response to the speculation blamed for the 1929
crash. The recovery was fragile and unevenly felt, especially on the Great
Plains, where drought had turned overplowed farmland to dust. Over May 9-11,
high winds lifted an estimated 350 million tons of topsoil into the air,
darkening skies as far away as Washington and New York and giving city
readers who had never seen a wheat field a first glimpse of the disaster
building in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Consumer prices stood 35.4% above
their 1913 level, still well below the 1929 peak but rising
for the first time since the Depression began. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
Every 1934 amount converts to 1959 at the same ratio, 2.17: $1,000 becomes
$2,172, and $10,000 becomes $21,716.
Amount in 1934
Value in 1959
$1.00
$2.17
$5.00
$10.86
$10.00
$21.72
$20.00
$43.43
$50.00
$109
$100
$217
$500
$1,086
$1,000
$2,172
$5,000
$10,858
$10,000
$21,716
$100,000
$217,164
$1,000,000
$2,171,642
Inflation by spending category, 1934–1959
Between 1934 and 1959, food rose the most, up 156.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 118.4%, against 117.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1934
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1934 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.15%
$217
Food
3.83%
$256
Apparel
3.17%
$218
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1934: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1934 to 1959
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (0.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1934–1959 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1934, at end
1934–1940
0.73%
4.5%
$104
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$180
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$217
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1934
$100 from 1934 had already become $146 by
1946, on its way to $217 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 2.1% in 1938, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1934 had the buying
power of $217; 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 1934 to 1959: $100 is worth $217 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1934-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1934 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1934-to-1959/