$100 in 1944 is worth $135 in 1949,
because prices increased 35.2% over that period, an average of
6.22% a year.
$100 in 1944 has
the same buying power as
$135
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
35.2%
Average inflation rate
6.22% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$135
Price difference ($100 base)
$35.23
CPI in 1944
17.6
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1944
1.73%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1944 → 1949
$135
$100 in 1949 → 1944
$73.95
What happened to prices between 1944 and 1949
Between 1944 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.6 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 35.2%, which works out to an average of
6.22% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1944 bought what
$0.74 buys in 1949: the 1944 dollar
lost 26.1% of its purchasing power over
these 5 years.
Consumer prices rose just 1.7% in 1944, down from 1943’s
6.1% and the slowest increase of the war years, as price and wage controls
held the cost of living nearly flat even as the conflict reached its most
expensive phase. The war itself turned decisively that June, when more than
150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, opening the
long-planned second front against Nazi Germany. Congress used the same
month to plan for the war’s end, passing the GI Bill on June 22 to give
returning veterans money for college or vocational training, low-cost home
and business loans, and unemployment benefits, a package that would reshape
American housing and higher education for a generation. The following
month, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered at Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, and agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, itself
pegged to gold, creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
to manage the new system. Consumer prices stood 77.8% above their
1913 level, a cumulative wartime rise held down by controls
that would start unwinding the following year. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
Every 1944 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.35: $1,000 becomes
$1,352, and $10,000 becomes $13,523.
Amount in 1944
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.35
$5.00
$6.76
$10.00
$13.52
$20.00
$27.05
$50.00
$67.61
$100
$135
$500
$676
$1,000
$1,352
$5,000
$6,761
$10,000
$13,523
$100,000
$135,227
$1,000,000
$1,352,273
Inflation by spending category, 1944–1949
Between 1944 and 1949, food rose the most, up 47.9%, while medical care rose the least, up 27.6%, against 35.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1944
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1944 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.22%
$135
Food
8.15%
$148
Transportation
6.81%
$139
Apparel
6.49%
$137
Medical care
4.99%
$128
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1944: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1944
$100 from 1944 had already become $111 by
1946, on its way to $135 in 1949; 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.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1944 had the buying
power of $135; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1944 to 1949: $100 is worth $135 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1944-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1944 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1944-to-1949/