$100 in 1943 is worth $1,300 in 2011,
because prices increased 1200.2% over that period, an average of
3.84% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$1,300
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1200.2%
Average inflation rate
3.84% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,300
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,200
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1943 → 2011
$1,300
$100 in 2011 → 1943
$7.69
What happened to prices between 1943 and 2011
Between 1943 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1200.2%, which works out to an average of
3.84% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.08 buys in 2011: the 1943 dollar
lost 92.3% of its purchasing power over
these 68 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 2011 at the same ratio, 13.00: $1,000 becomes
$13,002, and $10,000 becomes $130,023.
Amount in 1943
Value in 2011
$1.00
$13.00
$5.00
$65.01
$10.00
$130
$20.00
$260
$50.00
$650
$100
$1,300
$500
$6,501
$1,000
$13,002
$5,000
$65,011
$10,000
$130,023
$100,000
$1,300,225
$1,000,000
$13,002,254
Inflation by spending category, 1943–2011
Between 1943 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 3473.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 339.2%, against 1200.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.84%
$1,300
Medical care
5.40%
$3,574
Transportation
3.89%
$1,336
Food
3.88%
$1,332
Apparel
2.20%
$439
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 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 1943–2011 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,260
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$1,300
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1943
$100 from 1943 had already become $377 by
1978, on its way to $1,300 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 1943 had the buying
power of $1,300; 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 1943 to 2011: $100 is worth $1,300 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-2011/