$100 in 1943 is worth $1,092 in 2004,
because prices increased 991.9% over that period, an average of
4.00% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$1,092
in 2004
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
991.9%
Average inflation rate
4.00% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,092
Price difference ($100 base)
$992
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 2004
188.9
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 2004
2.66%
$100 in 1943 → 2004
$1,092
$100 in 2004 → 1943
$9.16
What happened to prices between 1943 and 2004
Between 1943 and 2004, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 188.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 991.9%, which works out to an average of
4.00% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.09 buys in 2004: the 1943 dollar
lost 90.8% of its purchasing power over
these 61 years.
Consumer prices rose 6.1% in 1943, a slower pace than 1942’s
surge but still well above anything the country had seen before the war.
The slowdown owed largely to the “Hold the Line” order, issued that April,
which froze most wages, prices, and rents at their current levels after the
previous year’s jump showed how far demand had outrun the existing
controls. Rationing grew more sophisticated alongside the freeze: starting
in February, a points system split scarce goods into red points for meat,
butter, and other fats and blue points for canned and processed foods,
letting households budget across categories instead of simply going without
once a flat quota ran dry. The government also changed how it collected the
taxes paying for all of it. The Current Tax Payment Act, signed June 9,
required employers to withhold federal income tax directly from paychecks
for the first time, smoothing the flow of wartime revenue and creating the
pay-as-you-go system still used today. Consumer prices stood 74.7% above
their 1913 level and 33.1% above 1933’s
Depression-era low. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
Every 1943 amount converts to 2004 at the same ratio, 10.92: $1,000 becomes
$10,919, and $10,000 becomes $109,191.
Amount in 1943
Value in 2004
$1.00
$10.92
$5.00
$54.60
$10.00
$109
$20.00
$218
$50.00
$546
$100
$1,092
$500
$5,460
$1,000
$10,919
$5,000
$54,595
$10,000
$109,191
$100,000
$1,091,908
$1,000,000
$10,919,075
Inflation by spending category, 1943–2004
Between 1943 and 2004, medical care rose the most, up 2668.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 333.1%, against 991.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 2004, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.00%
$1,092
Medical care
5.60%
$2,769
Food
3.99%
$1,089
Transportation
3.89%
$1,026
Apparel
2.43%
$433
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1943: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1943 to 2004
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 1943–2004 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1943, at end
1943–1950
4.85%
39.3%
$139
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$171
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$224
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$476
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$755
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$995
2000–2004
2.34%
9.7%
$1,092
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1943
$100 from 1943 had already become $257 by
1973, on its way to $1,092 in 2004; 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: 2004
In 2004, prices rose 2.7% and $100 from 1943 had the buying
power of $1,092; the year's average CPI of 188.9 is the level
behind every 2004 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in 2004, with a 29-cent jump in the price of gasoline, to $1.88 a
gallon, doing much of the work. Crude oil passed $50 a barrel in October on rising demand
from China and India. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in four years on
June 30, to 1.25%, and it kept going: 17 consecutive quarter-point increases took the rate to
5.25% by June 2006. Housing was already running ahead of incomes. The median household earned
about $44,300, up 2.3% from 2003, while the median new home sold for $221,000, up about 13%. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15, unchanged since
1997.
MLA: “Inflation from 1943 to 2004: $100 is worth $1,092 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-2004/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 2004. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-2004/