Value of $100 in 1939, adjusted to 1976

What happened to prices between 1939 and 1976

Between 1939 and 1976, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.9 to 56.9. Cumulatively, prices increased 309.4%, which works out to an average of 3.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1939 bought what $0.24 buys in 1976.

Consumer prices fell 1.4% in 1939, closing out a decade in which the CPI fell in six years and rose in four, leaving prices 18.7% below their 1929 level even after the mid-decade recovery. Measured against the start of the CPI’s modern record, prices still stood 40.4% above their 1913 level, a reminder that even a decade defined by deflation left the cost of living well above where it had been a generation earlier. The decade’s final months reset the economic picture entirely. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France declared war two days later; the United States stayed formally neutral under the Neutrality Acts, but Allied orders for war materiel began flowing to American factories almost immediately, a demand shock that would do more to end the Depression over the next few years than any peacetime relief program had managed. Domestic policy kept building on the New Deal’s framework, too: the federal minimum wage rose to 30 cents an hour that October, the second step in the schedule set by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Amid it all, the New York World’s Fair opened April 30 in Queens, themed “The World of Tomorrow” and drawing tens of millions of visitors with exhibits on television and other technologies promising a more prosperous decade than the one just ending. First-class postage held at 3 cents.

More about inflation in 1939 →

The destination year: 1976

Consumer prices rose 5.8% in 1976, the calmest pace since 1972, as the economy pulled out of the 1973-75 recession and price growth settled to roughly half its 1974 peak. The recovery gave Americans room to celebrate: tall ships filled New York Harbor and fireworks lit cities nationwide on July 4 for the country’s bicentennial, a rare moment of shared celebration after Vietnam and Watergate. Politically, Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor running as a Washington outsider, defeated incumbent Gerald Ford that November, campaigning on restoring trust in government and bringing down inflation and unemployment together. In a California garage, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer that April to sell the Apple I, a bare circuit board aimed at electronics hobbyists, a business that looked far from consequential at the time. First-class postage, which had risen to 13 cents that past December 31, held there through the year, the longest stretch without a rate change since the Postal Service’s creation. A median household earned $12,686 in 1976, a new home sold for a median $44,200, and gas averaged 59 cents a gallon. Consumer prices stood 474.7% above their 1913 level, a calm interlude before inflation turned back up.

More about inflation in 1976 →