$100 in 1947 is worth $1,009 in 2011,
because prices increased 908.7% over that period, an average of
3.68% a year.
$100 in 1947 has
the same buying power as
$1,009
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
908.7%
Average inflation rate
3.68% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,009
Price difference ($100 base)
$909
CPI in 1947
22.3
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1947 → 2011
$1,009
$100 in 2011 → 1947
$9.91
What happened to prices between 1947 and 2011
Between 1947 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 908.7%, which works out to an average of
3.68% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.10 buys in 2011: the 1947 dollar
lost 90.1% of its purchasing power over
these 64 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 2011 at the same ratio, 10.09: $1,000 becomes
$10,087, and $10,000 becomes $100,870.
Amount in 1947
Value in 2011
$1.00
$10.09
$5.00
$50.43
$10.00
$101
$20.00
$202
$50.00
$504
$100
$1,009
$500
$5,043
$1,000
$10,087
$5,000
$50,435
$10,000
$100,870
$100,000
$1,008,695
$1,000,000
$10,086,951
Inflation by spending category, 1947–2011
Between 1947 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 2864.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 206.0%, against 908.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1947
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.68%
$1,009
Medical care
5.44%
$2,965
Transportation
3.89%
$1,148
Food
3.57%
$945
Apparel
1.76%
$306
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 2011
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 1947–2011 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$978
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$1,009
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1947
$100 from 1947 had already become $272 by
1977, on its way to $1,009 in 2011; 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: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1947 had the buying
power of $1,009; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1947 to 2011: $100 is worth $1,009 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2011/