$100 in 1934 is worth $925 in 1989,
because prices increased 825.4% over that period, an average of
4.13% a year.
$100 in 1934 has
the same buying power as
$925
in 1989
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
825.4%
Average inflation rate
4.13% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$925
Price difference ($100 base)
$825
CPI in 1934
13.4
CPI in 1989
124
Inflation in 1934
3.08%
Inflation in 1989
4.82%
$100 in 1934 → 1989
$925
$100 in 1989 → 1934
$10.81
What happened to prices between 1934 and 1989
Between 1934 and 1989, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.4 to 124.
Cumulatively, prices increased 825.4%, which works out to an average of
4.13% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1934 bought what
$0.11 buys in 1989: the 1934 dollar
lost 89.2% of its purchasing power over
these 55 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 1989 at the same ratio, 9.25: $1,000 becomes
$9,254, and $10,000 becomes $92,537.
Amount in 1934
Value in 1989
$1.00
$9.25
$5.00
$46.27
$10.00
$92.54
$20.00
$185
$50.00
$463
$100
$925
$500
$4,627
$1,000
$9,254
$5,000
$46,269
$10,000
$92,537
$100,000
$925,373
$1,000,000
$9,253,731
Inflation by spending category, 1934–1989
Between 1934 and 1989, food rose the most, up 978.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 475.7%, against 825.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1934
spending costs in 1989, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1934 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.13%
$925
Food
4.42%
$1,078
Apparel
3.23%
$576
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 1989
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (0.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1934–1989 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
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$221
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$290
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$615
1980–1989
4.65%
50.5%
$925
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1934
$100 from 1934 had already become $225 by
1962, on its way to $925 in 1989; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1989
In 1989, prices rose 4.8% and $100 from 1934 had the buying
power of $925; the year's average CPI of 124 is the level
behind every 1989 figure on this page.
1989 closed out a decade that began in economic crisis and ended in a long,
calmer expansion. Inflation for the year came in at 4.8%, higher than the
mid-decade lull but still roughly a third of the 13.5% peak that had opened
the decade in 1980. The federal minimum wage, unchanged at $3.35 an hour
since January 1981, had gone longer without an increase than at any point
since Congress created it, and had lost close to a third of its purchasing
power to inflation in the meantime; lawmakers would finally raise it to
$3.80 the following April. The decade’s other unfinished business came due
in August, when Congress passed FIRREA, the law that created the Resolution
Trust Corporation to seize and sell off the hundreds of savings and loan
institutions that a decade of deregulation and risky lending had left
insolvent, a bailout that eventually cost taxpayers over $100 billion. On
Wall Street, the recovery was already complete: the Dow Jones Industrial
Average closed 1989 at a record high, just over two years after Black
Monday’s 22.6% single-day crash, capping the bull market that had begun at
the Dow’s 776 low in August 1982. Between the S&L bailout, a wage floor
eroded by years without a raise, and a stock market at new highs, 1989
captured how unevenly the decade’s disinflation had been felt.
MLA: “Inflation from 1934 to 1989: $100 is worth $925 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1934-to-1989/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1934 to 1989. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1934-to-1989/