$100 in 1949 is worth $129 in 1963,
because prices increased 28.6% over that period, an average of
1.81% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$129
in 1963
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
28.6%
Average inflation rate
1.81% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$129
Price difference ($100 base)
$28.57
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1963
30.6
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1963
1.32%
$100 in 1949 → 1963
$129
$100 in 1963 → 1949
$77.78
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1963
Between 1949 and 1963, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 30.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 28.6%, which works out to an average of
1.81% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.78 buys in 1963: the 1949 dollar
lost 22.2% of its purchasing power over
these 14 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 1963 at the same ratio, 1.29: $1,000 becomes
$1,286, and $10,000 becomes $12,857.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1963
$1.00
$1.29
$5.00
$6.43
$10.00
$12.86
$20.00
$25.71
$50.00
$64.29
$100
$129
$500
$643
$1,000
$1,286
$5,000
$6,429
$10,000
$12,857
$100,000
$128,571
$1,000,000
$1,285,714
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1963
Between 1949 and 1963, medical care rose the most, up 62.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 15.0%, against 28.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1963, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.81%
$129
Medical care
3.54%
$163
Transportation
2.42%
$140
Food
1.57%
$124
Apparel
1.00%
$115
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 1963
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.08% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (1.11% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1963 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
1960–1963
1.11%
3.4%
$129
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $114 by
1956, on its way to $129 in 1963; 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 1963, prices rose 1.3% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $129; the year's average CPI of 30.6 is the level
behind every 1963 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.3% in 1963, up slightly from 1962’s
1.0% as the expansion entered its third year with inflation still low,
conditions that gave Kennedy room to push the large tax cut he had
proposed to Congress. The cost of a first-class stamp rose that January
7, to 5 cents from 4 cents, the first postal rate change since 1958. That
August 28, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech
from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a quarter million people
gathered for the March on Washington, building pressure on Congress to
pass the civil rights bill Kennedy had proposed that June. The year ended
in tragedy: Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through
Dallas on November 22, and Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force
One that same afternoon. Johnson would spend the following year pushing
Kennedy’s stalled tax and civil rights agenda through Congress. The
minimum wage rose again that September, to $1.25 an hour, the second step
of the phased increase set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1963 209.1% above their 1913 level.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1963: $100 is worth $129 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1963/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1963. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1963/