$100 in 1945 is worth $132 in 1949,
because prices increased 32.2% over that period, an average of
7.23% a year.
$100 in 1945 has
the same buying power as
$132
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
32.2%
Average inflation rate
7.23% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$132
Price difference ($100 base)
$32.22
CPI in 1945
18
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1945
2.27%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1945 → 1949
$132
$100 in 1949 → 1945
$75.63
What happened to prices between 1945 and 1949
Between 1945 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 18 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 32.2%, which works out to an average of
7.23% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1945 bought what
$0.76 buys in 1949: the 1945 dollar
lost 24.4% of its purchasing power over
these 4 years.
Consumer prices rose 2.3% in 1945, up from 1944’s 1.7% but
still modest, a rate that understated how much pressure had built up behind
wartime price and wage controls, which stayed largely in place even as the
conflict that justified them came to a close. The year opened with a shock
at home: Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, less
than three months into an unprecedented fourth term, and Vice President
Harry Truman was sworn in that same afternoon. The war Roosevelt had led for
nearly four years ended without him. Germany surrendered on May 8, and
Japan surrendered on August 15, after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that month, with the formal signing aboard the USS Missouri on
September 2. Domestic policy kept moving even as the guns fell silent: the
federal minimum wage rose to 40 cents an hour that October 24, the final
step of the schedule Congress had built into the 1938 Fair Labor Standards
Act, up from 30 cents in 1939 and 25 cents at the law’s start. Consumer
prices stood 81.8% above their 1913 level, a gain that would
look modest next to what followed once wartime controls actually came off.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1945 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.32: $1,000 becomes
$1,322, and $10,000 becomes $13,222.
Amount in 1945
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.32
$5.00
$6.61
$10.00
$13.22
$20.00
$26.44
$50.00
$66.11
$100
$132
$500
$661
$1,000
$1,322
$5,000
$6,611
$10,000
$13,222
$100,000
$132,222
$1,000,000
$1,322,222
Inflation by spending category, 1945–1949
Between 1945 and 1949, food rose the most, up 44.5%, while medical care rose the least, up 24.4%, against 32.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1945
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1945 →
All items (CPI-U)
7.23%
$132
Food
9.64%
$145
Transportation
8.58%
$139
Apparel
6.77%
$130
Medical care
5.60%
$124
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1945: 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 1945
$100 from 1945 had already become $124 by
1947, on its way to $132 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 1945 had the buying
power of $132; 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 1945 to 1949: $100 is worth $132 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1945 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1949/