$100 in 1949 is worth $114 in 1956,
because prices increased 14.3% over that period, an average of
1.93% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$114
in 1956
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
14.3%
Average inflation rate
1.93% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$114
Price difference ($100 base)
$14.29
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1956
27.2
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1956
1.49%
$100 in 1949 → 1956
$114
$100 in 1956 → 1949
$87.50
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1956
Between 1949 and 1956, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 27.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 14.3%, which works out to an average of
1.93% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.88 buys in 1956: the 1949 dollar
lost 12.5% of its purchasing power over
these 7 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 1956 at the same ratio, 1.14: $1,000 becomes
$1,143, and $10,000 becomes $11,429.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1956
$1.00
$1.14
$5.00
$5.71
$10.00
$11.43
$20.00
$22.86
$50.00
$57.14
$100
$114
$500
$571
$1,000
$1,143
$5,000
$5,714
$10,000
$11,429
$100,000
$114,286
$1,000,000
$1,142,857
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1956
Between 1949 and 1956, medical care rose the most, up 27.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 7.1%, against 14.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1956, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.93%
$114
Medical care
3.56%
$128
Transportation
2.46%
$119
Food
1.63%
$112
Apparel
0.99%
$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 1956
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.04% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1956 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1956
2.04%
12.9%
$114
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $111 by
1952, on its way to $114 in 1956; 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 prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1956, prices rose 1.5% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $114; the year's average CPI of 27.2 is the level
behind every 1956 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1956, a return to mild inflation after they had
fallen 0.4% in 1955, the only annual decline of the decade. The two years sat
in the calmest stretch of the postwar index, a lull between the Korean War
price surge earlier in the 1950s and the acceleration that would return in
the 1970s. Congress had already raised the wage floor into that calm: the
Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1955, signed the previous August, took
effect March 1 and lifted the federal minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an
hour, the first increase since 1950. Eisenhower signed a longer-lasting
commitment on June 29, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, funding 41,000 miles of
controlled-access highway at 90% federal cost to build the Interstate
System, the largest public-works program the country had undertaken. He won
a second term that November, carrying 41 states and about 57% of the
popular vote in a rematch against Adlai Stevenson. Abroad, the Suez Crisis
broke the calm on the supply side: Egypt nationalized the canal on July 26,
and after Israel invaded the Sinai on October 29 with British and French
forces following, the canal’s closure and damaged pipelines squeezed oil
shipments to Western Europe for months. Consumer prices stood 174.7% above
their 1913 level by 1956, up 94% since 1940
alone, even after a decade that had barely moved the index. First-class
postage held at 3 cents, unchanged since 1932.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1956: $100 is worth $114 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1956/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1956. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1956/