$100 in 1947 is worth $433 in 1982,
because prices increased 332.7% over that period, an average of
4.27% a year.
$100 in 1947 has
the same buying power as
$433
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
332.7%
Average inflation rate
4.27% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$433
Price difference ($100 base)
$333
CPI in 1947
22.3
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1947 → 1982
$433
$100 in 1982 → 1947
$23.11
What happened to prices between 1947 and 1982
Between 1947 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 332.7%, which works out to an average of
4.27% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.23 buys in 1982: the 1947 dollar
lost 76.9% of its purchasing power over
these 35 years.
Consumer prices rose 14.4% in 1947, up from 1946’s 8.3% and
the fastest annual increase since 1920, as the last of the wartime price
controls disappeared and a year of strikes, wage catch-up, and lingering
shortages hit consumers all at once. Congress answered the previous year’s
strike wave that June, overriding President Truman’s veto to pass the
Taft-Hartley Act, which banned secondary boycotts and the closed shop and
let states adopt “right-to-work” laws curbing union power. American
attention was also turning outward. In a June 5 speech at Harvard,
Secretary of State George Marshall outlined a U.S.-funded plan to rebuild
Western Europe’s economies, an effort that would become known as the
Marshall Plan once Congress funded it the following year. The government
reorganized itself for the confrontation with the Soviet Union that plan was
partly designed to prevent: the National Security Act, signed July 26,
created the Department of Defense, the Air Force as a separate service, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Consumer
prices stood 125.3% above their 1913 level and 30.4% above
1929’s pre-Depression peak, up from just 1.2% above it four
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
Every 1947 amount converts to 1982 at the same ratio, 4.33: $1,000 becomes
$4,327, and $10,000 becomes $43,274.
Amount in 1947
Value in 1982
$1.00
$4.33
$5.00
$21.64
$10.00
$43.27
$20.00
$86.55
$50.00
$216
$100
$433
$500
$2,164
$1,000
$4,327
$5,000
$21,637
$10,000
$43,274
$100,000
$432,735
$1,000,000
$4,327,354
Inflation by spending category, 1947–1982
Between 1947 and 1982, medical care rose the most, up 585.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 145.1%, against 332.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1947
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.27%
$433
Medical care
5.65%
$685
Transportation
4.85%
$524
Food
4.07%
$404
Apparel
2.59%
$245
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1947: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1947 to 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1947–1982 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1947, at end
1947–1950
2.62%
8.1%
$108
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$133
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$174
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$370
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$433
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1947
$100 from 1947 had already become $141 by
1965, on its way to $433 in 1982; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and prices fell 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1947 had the buying
power of $433; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1947 to 1982: $100 is worth $433 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1982/