Between 1948 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 24.1 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 10.0%, which works out to an average of
2.40% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1948 bought what
$0.91 buys in 1952.
Consumer prices rose 8.1% in 1948, down slightly from 1947’s
14.4% but still the second straight year of sharp postwar inflation now
that wartime price controls were fully gone. Congress moved to stabilize a
different economy that April, passing the Economic Cooperation Act to fund
the plan Secretary of State George Marshall had proposed the year before:
more than $13 billion over four years to rebuild Western Europe and counter
Soviet influence. The Cold War turned tense closer to the plan’s target
that June, when Soviet forces cut off road and rail access to the
Western-controlled sectors of Berlin. American and British aircraft
responded almost immediately with an airlift of food, fuel, and supplies
that would keep the city running for nearly a year. Domestic politics
produced its own upset that November: nearly every poll and pundit had
predicted a Republican win, but Harry Truman defeated New York Governor
Thomas Dewey, handing the Chicago Tribune its famously wrong “Dewey Defeats
Truman” headline. Consumer prices finished the year 143.4% above their
1913 level and 40.9% above 1929’s
pre-Depression peak. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 40 cents an hour.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1948 spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1948 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.40%
$110
Transportation
5.69%
$125
Medical care
3.77%
$116
Food
2.40%
$110
Apparel
0.58%
$102
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1948: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
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 1948 to 1952: $100 is worth $110 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1948-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1948 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1948-to-1952/