$100 in 1940 is worth $191 in 1955,
because prices increased 91.4% over that period, an average of
4.42% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$191
in 1955
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
91.4%
Average inflation rate
4.42% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$191
Price difference ($100 base)
$91.43
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 1955
26.8
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
$100 in 1940 → 1955
$191
$100 in 1955 → 1940
$52.24
What happened to prices between 1940 and 1955
Between 1940 and 1955, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 26.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 91.4%, which works out to an average of
4.42% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.52 buys in 1955: the 1940 dollar
lost 47.8% of its purchasing power over
these 15 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 1955 at the same ratio, 1.91: $1,000 becomes
$1,914, and $10,000 becomes $19,143.
Amount in 1940
Value in 1955
$1.00
$1.91
$5.00
$9.57
$10.00
$19.14
$20.00
$38.29
$50.00
$95.71
$100
$191
$500
$957
$1,000
$1,914
$5,000
$9,571
$10,000
$19,143
$100,000
$191,429
$1,000,000
$1,914,286
Inflation by spending category, 1940–1955
Between 1940 and 1955, food rose the most, up 131.7%, while medical care rose the least, up 75.0%, against 91.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 1955, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.42%
$191
Food
5.76%
$232
Apparel
4.62%
$197
Transportation
4.06%
$182
Medical care
3.80%
$175
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–).
Decade by decade: 1940 to 1955
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.15% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1940–1955 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1940, at end
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$172
1950–1955
2.15%
11.2%
$191
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $159 by
1947, on its way to $191 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 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1955, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $191; 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 1940 to 1955: $100 is worth $191 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1955/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 1955. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1955/