$100 in 1940 is worth $689 in 1982,
because prices increased 589.3% over that period, an average of
4.70% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$689
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
589.3%
Average inflation rate
4.70% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$689
Price difference ($100 base)
$589
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1940 → 1982
$689
$100 in 1982 → 1940
$14.51
What happened to prices between 1940 and 1982
Between 1940 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 589.3%, which works out to an average of
4.70% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.15 buys in 1982: the 1940 dollar
lost 85.5% of its purchasing power over
these 42 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 1982 at the same ratio, 6.89: $1,000 becomes
$6,893, and $10,000 becomes $68,929.
Amount in 1940
Value in 1982
$1.00
$6.89
$5.00
$34.46
$10.00
$68.93
$20.00
$138
$50.00
$345
$100
$689
$500
$3,446
$1,000
$6,893
$5,000
$34,464
$10,000
$68,929
$100,000
$689,286
$1,000,000
$6,892,857
Inflation by spending category, 1940–1982
Between 1940 and 1982, medical care rose the most, up 789.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 348.6%, against 589.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.70%
$689
Medical care
5.34%
$889
Food
5.11%
$812
Transportation
4.68%
$683
Apparel
3.64%
$449
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 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1940–1982 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$277
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$589
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$689
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $211 by
1960, on its way to $689 in 1982; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $689; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1940 to 1982: $100 is worth $689 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-1982/