$100 in 1938 is worth $190 in 1955,
because prices increased 90.1% over that period, an average of
3.85% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$190
in 1955
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
90.1%
Average inflation rate
3.85% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$190
Price difference ($100 base)
$90.07
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 1955
26.8
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
$100 in 1938 → 1955
$190
$100 in 1955 → 1938
$52.61
What happened to prices between 1938 and 1955
Between 1938 and 1955, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 26.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 90.1%, which works out to an average of
3.85% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.53 buys in 1955: the 1938 dollar
lost 47.4% of its purchasing power over
these 17 years.
Consumer prices fell 2.1% in 1938, reversing most of 1937’s
gain and interrupting four straight years of recovery from the Depression’s
trough. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the bottom of the
downturn, which had begun that May, to June 1938, a sharp 13-month
contraction that briefly pushed unemployment back up near 19%. Even in a
year the economy was shrinking again, Congress passed one of the New Deal’s
most lasting reforms. The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed June 25 and
effective that October, established the first federal minimum wage, 25
cents an hour, capped the standard workweek at 44 hours with time-and-a-half
overtime beyond it, and restricted the employment of children in most
industries. The wage floor and hours limits applied only to workers engaged
in interstate commerce at first, but they set a precedent that would expand
in the decades that followed. Consumer prices stood 42.4% above their
1913 level and 17.5% below their 1929 peak, evidence of how
far the recovery still had to go even eight years after the Depression
began. First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1938 amount converts to 1955 at the same ratio, 1.90: $1,000 becomes
$1,901, and $10,000 becomes $19,007.
Amount in 1938
Value in 1955
$1.00
$1.90
$5.00
$9.50
$10.00
$19.01
$20.00
$38.01
$50.00
$95.04
$100
$190
$500
$950
$1,000
$1,901
$5,000
$9,504
$10,000
$19,007
$100,000
$190,071
$1,000,000
$1,900,709
Inflation by spending category, 1938–1955
Between 1938 and 1955, food rose the most, up 129.8%, while medical care rose the least, up 76.7%, against 90.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 1955, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.85%
$190
Food
5.01%
$230
Apparel
4.03%
$196
Transportation
3.41%
$177
Medical care
3.41%
$177
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1938: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1938 to 1955
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1938–1955 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1938, at end
1938–1940
-0.36%
-0.7%
$99.29
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$171
1950–1955
2.15%
11.2%
$190
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $138 by
1946, on its way to $190 in 1955; 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 1.4% in 1939, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1955, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $190; the year's average CPI of 26.8 is the level
behind every 1955 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the first annual decline since 1949,
as a strong rebound from the 1953-54 recession delivered growth without
much price pressure; automakers and appliance makers competed hard on
price for a booming consumer market. Organized labor consolidated that
December, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations merged on the 5th under President George Meany,
uniting roughly 15 million workers in the AFL-CIO after two decades as
rival federations. That same day, a different kind of organizing began in
Montgomery, Alabama: four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing
to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, the city’s Black community
began a boycott of its buses that would last more than a year and help
launch the civil rights movement’s mass phase. Markets got a scare that
September: news of Eisenhower’s heart attack on the 24th sent the Dow
Jones Industrial Average to its steepest one-day drop since the 1929
crash when trading resumed that Monday, before stocks recovered as the
president’s health improved. Consumer prices finished 1955 170.7% above
their 1913 level, essentially unchanged from where they
stood a year earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 1955: $100 is worth $190 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1955/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 1955. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1955/