$100 in 1940 is worth $211 in 1960,
because prices increased 111.4% over that period, an average of
3.81% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$211
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
111.4%
Average inflation rate
3.81% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$211
Price difference ($100 base)
$111
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1940 → 1960
$211
$100 in 1960 → 1940
$47.30
What happened to prices between 1940 and 1960
Between 1940 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 111.4%, which works out to an average of
3.81% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.47 buys in 1960: the 1940 dollar
lost 52.7% of its purchasing power over
these 20 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 1960 at the same ratio, 2.11: $1,000 becomes
$2,114, and $10,000 becomes $21,143.
Amount in 1940
Value in 1960
$1.00
$2.11
$5.00
$10.57
$10.00
$21.14
$20.00
$42.29
$50.00
$106
$100
$211
$500
$1,057
$1,000
$2,114
$5,000
$10,571
$10,000
$21,143
$100,000
$211,429
$1,000,000
$2,114,286
Inflation by spending category, 1940–1960
Between 1940 and 1960, food rose the most, up 150.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 109.6%, against 111.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.81%
$211
Food
4.69%
$250
Medical care
3.89%
$214
Transportation
3.78%
$210
Apparel
3.77%
$210
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 1960
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1940–1960 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1940, at end
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$172
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$211
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $172 by
1950, on its way to $211 in 1960; 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 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $211; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1940 to 1960: $100 is worth $211 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1960/