$100 in 1940 is worth $1,849 in 2020,
because prices increased 1748.6% over that period, an average of
3.71% a year.
$100 in 1940 has
the same buying power as
$1,849
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1748.6%
Average inflation rate
3.71% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,849
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,749
CPI in 1940
14
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1940
0.72%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1940 → 2020
$1,849
$100 in 2020 → 1940
$5.41
What happened to prices between 1940 and 2020
Between 1940 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1748.6%, which works out to an average of
3.71% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what
$0.05 buys in 2020: the 1940 dollar
lost 94.6% of its purchasing power over
these 80 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 2020 at the same ratio, 18.49: $1,000 becomes
$18,487, and $10,000 becomes $184,865.
Amount in 1940
Value in 2020
$1.00
$18.49
$5.00
$92.43
$10.00
$185
$20.00
$370
$50.00
$924
$100
$1,849
$500
$9,243
$1,000
$18,487
$5,000
$92,433
$10,000
$184,865
$100,000
$1,848,650
$1,000,000
$18,486,500
Inflation by spending category, 1940–2020
Between 1940 and 2020, medical care rose the most, up 4889.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 441.6%, against 1748.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1940
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1940 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.71%
$1,849
Medical care
5.01%
$4,989
Food
3.96%
$2,227
Transportation
3.37%
$1,418
Apparel
2.13%
$542
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 2020
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2010s (1.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1940–2020 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
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,849
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1940
$100 from 1940 had already become $589 by
1980, on its way to $1,849 in 2020; 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: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1940 had the buying
power of $1,849; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1940 to 2020: $100 is worth $1,849 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1940 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1940-to-2020/