$100 in 1947 is worth $962 in 2009,
because prices increased 862.0% over that period, an average of
3.72% a year.
$100 in 1947 has
the same buying power as
$962
in 2009
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
862.0%
Average inflation rate
3.72% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$962
Price difference ($100 base)
$862
CPI in 1947
22.3
CPI in 2009
214.537
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
Inflation in 2009
-0.36%
$100 in 1947 → 2009
$962
$100 in 2009 → 1947
$10.39
What happened to prices between 1947 and 2009
Between 1947 and 2009, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 214.537.
Cumulatively, prices increased 862.0%, which works out to an average of
3.72% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.10 buys in 2009: the 1947 dollar
lost 89.6% of its purchasing power over
these 62 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 2009 at the same ratio, 9.62: $1,000 becomes
$9,620, and $10,000 becomes $96,205.
Amount in 1947
Value in 2009
$1.00
$9.62
$5.00
$48.10
$10.00
$96.20
$20.00
$192
$50.00
$481
$100
$962
$500
$4,810
$1,000
$9,620
$5,000
$48,102
$10,000
$96,205
$100,000
$962,049
$1,000,000
$9,620,493
Inflation by spending category, 1947–2009
Between 1947 and 2009, medical care rose the most, up 2682.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 200.9%, against 862.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1947
spending costs in 2009, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.72%
$962
Medical care
5.51%
$2,782
Transportation
3.73%
$969
Food
3.62%
$904
Apparel
1.79%
$301
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 2009
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 1947–2009 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$586
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$772
2000–2009
2.47%
24.6%
$962
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1947
$100 from 1947 had already become $272 by
1977, on its way to $962 in 2009; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2009
In 2009, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1947 had the buying
power of $962; the year's average CPI of 214.537 is the level
behind every 2009 figure on this page.
2009 is the rarest kind of year in the modern price data: one where the cost
of living went down. The CPI fell 0.4%, the first full-year deflation
since 1955, as the Great Recession hollowed out demand and oil unwound from
its $147 spike the summer before. Gasoline that had cost over $4 a gallon in
July 2008 averaged $2.35 in 2009, and that energy collapse dragged the
12-month inflation rate to −2.1% by July, the deepest reading since 1950.
Policymakers treated falling prices not as relief but as a warning: deflation
raises the real weight of debt precisely when households are drowning in it,
which is why the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates near zero, began buying
bonds by the hundreds of billions, and Washington passed a $787 billion
stimulus. The medicine took: prices stabilized within a year, and 2009 remains
the textbook case of why central banks fear deflation more than moderate
inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1947 to 2009: $100 is worth $962 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2009/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 2009. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2009/