$100 in 1940 is worth $1,607 in 2011,
because prices increased 1506.7% over that period, an average of
3.99% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$1,607
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1506.7%
Average inflation rate
3.99% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,607
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,507
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1940 → 2011
$1,607
$100 in 2011 → 1940
$6.22
What happened to prices between 1940 and 2011
Between 1940 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1506.7%, which works out to an average of
3.99% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.06 buys in 2011: the 1940 dollar
lost 93.8% of its purchasing power over
these 71 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 2011 at the same ratio, 16.07: $1,000 becomes
$16,067, and $10,000 becomes $160,671.
Amount in 1940
Value in 2011
$1.00
$16.07
$5.00
$80.34
$10.00
$161
$20.00
$321
$50.00
$803
$100
$1,607
$500
$8,034
$1,000
$16,067
$5,000
$80,335
$10,000
$160,671
$100,000
$1,606,707
$1,000,000
$16,067,071
Inflation by spending category, 1940–2011
Between 1940 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 3748.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 460.1%, against 1506.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.99%
$1,607
Medical care
5.28%
$3,849
Food
4.23%
$1,899
Transportation
3.88%
$1,496
Apparel
2.46%
$560
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 2011
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1940–2011 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$934
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,230
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,558
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$1,607
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $384 by
1975, on its way to $1,607 in 2011; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $1,607; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1940 to 2011: $100 is worth $1,607 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-2011/