$100 in 1945 is worth $147 in 1952,
because prices increased 47.2% over that period, an average of
5.68% a year.
$100 in 1945 has
the same buying power as
$147
in 1952
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
47.2%
Average inflation rate
5.68% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$147
Price difference ($100 base)
$47.22
CPI in 1945
18
CPI in 1952
26.5
Inflation in 1945
2.27%
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
$100 in 1945 → 1952
$147
$100 in 1952 → 1945
$67.92
What happened to prices between 1945 and 1952
Between 1945 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 18 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 47.2%, which works out to an average of
5.68% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1945 bought what
$0.68 buys in 1952: the 1945 dollar
lost 32.1% of its purchasing power over
these 7 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 1952 at the same ratio, 1.47: $1,000 becomes
$1,472, and $10,000 becomes $14,722.
Amount in 1945
Value in 1952
$1.00
$1.47
$5.00
$7.36
$10.00
$14.72
$20.00
$29.44
$50.00
$73.61
$100
$147
$500
$736
$1,000
$1,472
$5,000
$7,361
$10,000
$14,722
$100,000
$147,222
$1,000,000
$1,472,222
Inflation by spending category, 1945–1952
Between 1945 and 1952, food rose the most, up 65.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 38.5%, against 47.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1945
spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1945 →
All items (CPI-U)
5.68%
$147
Food
7.50%
$166
Transportation
7.10%
$162
Medical care
4.96%
$140
Apparel
4.77%
$139
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–).
Decade by decade: 1945 to 1952
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.01% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (4.86% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1945–1952 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1945, at end
1945–1950
6.01%
33.9%
$134
1950–1952
4.86%
10.0%
$147
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1945
$100 from 1945 had already become $134 by
1948, on its way to $147 in 1952; 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 1952, prices rose 1.9% and $100 from 1945 had the buying
power of $147; the year's average CPI of 26.5 is the level
behind every 1952 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.9% in 1952, down sharply from 1951’s
7.9% as the price and wage controls imposed the year before held the cost
of living in check even with the Korean War still underway. Labor strife
tested those controls that spring: to head off a strike that could have
disrupted war production, President Truman ordered the government to
seize the steel industry that April, over the objections of steel
companies fighting the price the Office of Price Stabilization had set for
their product. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that June, a landmark limit on
presidential power, and steelworkers then struck for 53 days before a
settlement. Politics delivered the year’s biggest change that November:
Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, promising to “go to Korea” to
end the war and returning Republicans to the White House for the first
time since 1933. The Cold War’s technological edge sharpened that same
month, when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak
Atoll on November 1, a device hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945. Consumer prices finished 1952
167.7% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1945 to 1952: $100 is worth $147 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1945 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1952/