$100 in 1949 is worth $124 in 1960,
because prices increased 24.4% over that period, an average of
2.00% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$124
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
24.4%
Average inflation rate
2.00% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$124
Price difference ($100 base)
$24.37
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1949 → 1960
$124
$100 in 1960 → 1949
$80.41
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1960
Between 1949 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 24.4%, which works out to an average of
2.00% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.80 buys in 1960: the 1949 dollar
lost 19.6% of its purchasing power over
these 11 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.24: $1,000 becomes
$1,244, and $10,000 becomes $12,437.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.24
$5.00
$6.22
$10.00
$12.44
$20.00
$24.87
$50.00
$62.18
$100
$124
$500
$622
$1,000
$1,244
$5,000
$6,218
$10,000
$12,437
$100,000
$124,370
$1,000,000
$1,243,697
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1960
Between 1949 and 1960, medical care rose the most, up 50.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 12.0%, against 24.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.00%
$124
Medical care
3.80%
$151
Transportation
2.75%
$135
Food
1.67%
$120
Apparel
1.04%
$112
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 1960
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.08% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1960 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$124
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $113 by
1954, on its way to $124 in 1960; 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 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $124; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1960: $100 is worth $124 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1960/