$100 in 1936 is worth $171 in 1949,
because prices increased 71.2% over that period, an average of
4.22% a year.
$100 in 1936 has
the same buying power as
$171
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
71.2%
Average inflation rate
4.22% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$171
Price difference ($100 base)
$71.22
CPI in 1936
13.9
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1936
1.46%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1936 → 1949
$171
$100 in 1949 → 1936
$58.40
What happened to prices between 1936 and 1949
Between 1936 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.9 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 71.2%, which works out to an average of
4.22% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1936 bought what
$0.58 buys in 1949: the 1936 dollar
lost 41.6% of its purchasing power over
these 13 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1936, a third straight annual increase and part
of a slow, steady climb back from the 1933 trough, though
prices and the broader economy still had not fully recovered to their
pre-Depression levels. Voters delivered their verdict on that recovery in
November, reelecting Franklin D. Roosevelt over Republican Alf Landon in one
of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history: Roosevelt carried 46 of 48
states and won the Electoral College 523 to 8, a broad public endorsement of
the New Deal. Public works kept advancing that year, too. Hoover Dam, one of
the era’s signature projects, had been dedicated in September 1935, but its
first generators did not begin sending electricity over transmission lines
to Los Angeles until October 1936, a milestone that showed how long even a
celebrated project took to reach full operation. Consumer prices ended the
year 40.4% above their 1913 level, still 18.7% below the
1929 peak, a gap that would keep narrowing until a sharp new recession
interrupted the recovery the following year. First-class postage held at 3
cents.
Every 1936 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.71: $1,000 becomes
$1,712, and $10,000 becomes $17,122.
Amount in 1936
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.71
$5.00
$8.56
$10.00
$17.12
$20.00
$34.24
$50.00
$85.61
$100
$171
$500
$856
$1,000
$1,712
$5,000
$8,561
$10,000
$17,122
$100,000
$171,223
$1,000,000
$1,712,230
Inflation by spending category, 1936–1949
Between 1936 and 1949, food rose the most, up 98.4%, while medical care rose the least, up 45.1%, against 71.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1936
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1936 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.22%
$171
Food
5.41%
$198
Apparel
5.24%
$194
Transportation
3.41%
$155
Medical care
2.90%
$145
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1936: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1936 to 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (0.18% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1936–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1936, at end
1936–1940
0.18%
0.7%
$101
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$171
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1936
$100 from 1936 had already become $117 by
1942, on its way to $171 in 1949; 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 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1936 had the buying
power of $171; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1936 to 1949: $100 is worth $171 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1936 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1949/