$100 in 1949 is worth $127 in 1962,
because prices increased 26.9% over that period, an average of
1.85% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$127
in 1962
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
26.9%
Average inflation rate
1.85% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$127
Price difference ($100 base)
$26.89
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1962
30.2
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1962
1.00%
$100 in 1949 → 1962
$127
$100 in 1962 → 1949
$78.81
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1962
Between 1949 and 1962, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 30.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 26.9%, which works out to an average of
1.85% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.79 buys in 1962: the 1949 dollar
lost 21.2% of its purchasing power over
these 13 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 1962 at the same ratio, 1.27: $1,000 becomes
$1,269, and $10,000 becomes $12,689.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1962
$1.00
$1.27
$5.00
$6.34
$10.00
$12.69
$20.00
$25.38
$50.00
$63.45
$100
$127
$500
$634
$1,000
$1,269
$5,000
$6,345
$10,000
$12,689
$100,000
$126,891
$1,000,000
$1,268,908
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1962
Between 1949 and 1962, medical care rose the most, up 58.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 13.5%, against 26.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1962, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.85%
$127
Medical care
3.62%
$159
Transportation
2.59%
$139
Food
1.57%
$122
Apparel
0.98%
$113
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 1962
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.08% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (1.01% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1962 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
1960–1962
1.01%
2.0%
$127
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $113 by
1955, on its way to $127 in 1962; 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 1962, prices rose 1.0% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $127; the year's average CPI of 30.2 is the level
behind every 1962 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.0% in 1962, matching 1961’s pace as
inflation stayed remarkably low and unemployment slowly declined from its
recession-era highs. That January, Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers
introduced “wage-price guideposts,” non-binding targets meant to keep pay
and price increases in line with productivity growth without formal
controls. The space race delivered a milestone that February, when John
Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times, making him the
first American to orbit the planet. Markets got a scare that spring: a
dispute over U.S. Steel’s April price increase, which Kennedy publicly
pressured the company into rolling back, rattled investors, and the Dow
Jones Industrial Average fell about 5.7% on May 28, its steepest one-day
drop since the 1929 crash. The year’s gravest moment came that October,
when American reconnaissance photographed Soviet nuclear missiles in
Cuba, setting off a 13-day standoff that brought the two superpowers
closer to nuclear war than at any other point in the Cold War before the
Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge
not to invade the island. Consumer prices finished 1962 205.1% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.15 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1962: $100 is worth $127 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1962/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1962. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1962/