$100 in 1940 is worth $170 in 1949,
because prices increased 70.0% over that period, an average of
6.07% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$170
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
70.0%
Average inflation rate
6.07% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$170
Price difference ($100 base)
$70.00
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1940 → 1949
$170
$100 in 1949 → 1940
$58.82
What happened to prices between 1940 and 1949
Between 1940 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 70.0%, which works out to an average of
6.07% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.59 buys in 1949: the 1940 dollar
lost 41.2% of its purchasing power over
these 9 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 1949 at the same ratio, 1.70: $1,000 becomes
$1,700, and $10,000 becomes $17,000.
Amount in 1940
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.70
$5.00
$8.50
$10.00
$17.00
$20.00
$34.00
$50.00
$85.00
$100
$170
$500
$850
$1,000
$1,700
$5,000
$8,500
$10,000
$17,000
$100,000
$170,000
$1,000,000
$1,700,000
Inflation by spending category, 1940–1949
Between 1940 and 1949, food rose the most, up 108.3%, while medical care rose the least, up 42.3%, against 70.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.07%
$170
Food
8.50%
$208
Apparel
7.21%
$187
Transportation
5.04%
$156
Medical care
4.00%
$142
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 $126 by
1944, on its way to $170 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 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $170; 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 1940 to 1949: $100 is worth $170 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1949/