$100 in 1949 is worth $122 in 1959,
because prices increased 22.3% over that period, an average of
2.03% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$122
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
22.3%
Average inflation rate
2.03% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$122
Price difference ($100 base)
$22.27
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1949 → 1959
$122
$100 in 1959 → 1949
$81.79
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1959
Between 1949 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 22.3%, which works out to an average of
2.03% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.82 buys in 1959: the 1949 dollar
lost 18.2% of its purchasing power over
these 10 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 1959 at the same ratio, 1.22: $1,000 becomes
$1,223, and $10,000 becomes $12,227.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.22
$5.00
$6.11
$10.00
$12.23
$20.00
$24.45
$50.00
$61.13
$100
$122
$500
$611
$1,000
$1,223
$5,000
$6,113
$10,000
$12,227
$100,000
$122,269
$1,000,000
$1,222,689
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1959
Between 1949 and 1959, medical care rose the most, up 45.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 10.3%, against 22.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.03%
$122
Medical care
3.80%
$145
Transportation
3.03%
$135
Food
1.74%
$119
Apparel
0.98%
$110
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 1959
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.12% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1959 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1959
2.12%
20.7%
$122
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $113 by
1954, on its way to $122 in 1959; 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 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $122; the year's average CPI of 29.1 is the level
behind every 1959 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1959: $100 is worth $122 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1959/