Between 1936 and 1990, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.9 to 130.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 840.3%, which works out to an average of
4.24% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1936 bought what
$0.11 buys in 1990.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1936 spending costs in 1990, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1936 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.24%
$940
Medical care
5.26%
$1,596
Food
4.45%
$1,051
Transportation
4.03%
$843
Apparel
3.34%
$591
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–).
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 1936 to 1990: $100 is worth $940 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1990/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1936 to 1990. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1990/