$100 in 1949 is worth $111 in 1952,
because prices increased 11.3% over that period, an average of
3.65% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$111
in 1952
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
11.3%
Average inflation rate
3.65% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$111
Price difference ($100 base)
$11.34
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1952
26.5
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
$100 in 1949 → 1952
$111
$100 in 1952 → 1949
$89.81
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1952
Between 1949 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 11.3%, which works out to an average of
3.65% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.90 buys in 1952: the 1949 dollar
lost 10.2% of its purchasing power over
these 3 years.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1949 amount converts to 1952 at the same ratio, 1.11: $1,000 becomes
$1,113, and $10,000 becomes $11,134.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1952
$1.00
$1.11
$5.00
$5.57
$10.00
$11.13
$20.00
$22.27
$50.00
$55.67
$100
$111
$500
$557
$1,000
$1,113
$5,000
$5,567
$10,000
$11,134
$100,000
$111,345
$1,000,000
$1,113,445
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1952
Between 1949 and 1952, transportation rose the most, up 16.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 6.6%, against 11.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.65%
$111
Transportation
5.16%
$116
Food
4.71%
$115
Medical care
4.11%
$113
Apparel
2.16%
$107
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1949: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1949 to 1952
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 4.86% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1952 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1952
4.86%
10.0%
$111
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $101 by
1950, on its way to $111 in 1952; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 7.9% in 1951, and the smallest rise was 1.3% in 1950.
In 1952, prices rose 1.9% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $111; 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 1949 to 1952: $100 is worth $111 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1952/