$100 in 1940 is worth $159 in 1947,
because prices increased 59.3% over that period, an average of
6.88% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$159
in 1947
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
59.3%
Average inflation rate
6.88% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$159
Price difference ($100 base)
$59.29
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 1947
22.3
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
$100 in 1940 → 1947
$159
$100 in 1947 → 1940
$62.78
What happened to prices between 1940 and 1947
Between 1940 and 1947, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 22.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 59.3%, which works out to an average of
6.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.63 buys in 1947: the 1940 dollar
lost 37.2% of its purchasing power over
these 7 years.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1940, snapping 1939’s decline
and marking the first increase since 1937. The gain was modest, and the CPI
still stood 18.1% below its 1929 peak, a reminder of how far
the recovery from the Depression’s trough had left to go even as defense
orders from Britain and France began reaching American factories. War was
already reshaping domestic policy well before it touched American soil.
Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act that September, the
country’s first peacetime draft, requiring men aged 21 to 35 to register and
authorizing the induction of up to 900,000 men a year, more than a year
before Pearl Harbor. That November, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented
third term, defeating Republican Wendell Willkie after campaigning on
keeping the United States out of the war then consuming Europe and Asia. The
promise would not hold much longer: within two years, wartime demand would
push consumer prices up faster than at any point since the aftermath of
World War I. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the federal minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour, the level set the previous October under
the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Every 1940 amount converts to 1947 at the same ratio, 1.59: $1,000 becomes
$1,593, and $10,000 becomes $15,929.
Amount in 1940
Value in 1947
$1.00
$1.59
$5.00
$7.96
$10.00
$15.93
$20.00
$31.86
$50.00
$79.64
$100
$159
$500
$796
$1,000
$1,593
$5,000
$7,964
$10,000
$15,929
$100,000
$159,286
$1,000,000
$1,592,857
Inflation by spending category, 1940–1947
Between 1940 and 1947, food rose the most, up 100.8%, while medical care rose the least, up 29.8%, against 59.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 1947, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.88%
$159
Food
10.47%
$201
Apparel
9.02%
$183
Transportation
3.85%
$130
Medical care
3.80%
$130
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1940: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $124 by
1943, on its way to $159 in 1947; 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 the smallest rise was 1.7% in 1944.
In 1947, prices rose 14.4% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $159; the year's average CPI of 22.3 is the level
behind every 1947 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 14.4% in 1947, up from 1946’s 8.3% and
the fastest annual increase since 1920, as the last of the wartime price
controls disappeared and a year of strikes, wage catch-up, and lingering
shortages hit consumers all at once. Congress answered the previous year’s
strike wave that June, overriding President Truman’s veto to pass the
Taft-Hartley Act, which banned secondary boycotts and the closed shop and
let states adopt “right-to-work” laws curbing union power. American
attention was also turning outward. In a June 5 speech at Harvard,
Secretary of State George Marshall outlined a U.S.-funded plan to rebuild
Western Europe’s economies, an effort that would become known as the
Marshall Plan once Congress funded it the following year. The government
reorganized itself for the confrontation with the Soviet Union that plan was
partly designed to prevent: the National Security Act, signed July 26,
created the Department of Defense, the Air Force as a separate service, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Consumer
prices stood 125.3% above their 1913 level and 30.4% above
1929’s pre-Depression peak, up from just 1.2% above it four
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1940 to 1947: $100 is worth $159 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1947/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 1947. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1947/