$100 in 1949 is worth $146 in 1968,
because prices increased 46.2% over that period, an average of
2.02% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$146
in 1968
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
46.2%
Average inflation rate
2.02% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$146
Price difference ($100 base)
$46.22
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1968
34.8
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
$100 in 1949 → 1968
$146
$100 in 1968 → 1949
$68.39
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1968
Between 1949 and 1968, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 34.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 46.2%, which works out to an average of
2.02% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.68 buys in 1968: the 1949 dollar
lost 31.6% of its purchasing power over
these 19 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 1968 at the same ratio, 1.46: $1,000 becomes
$1,462, and $10,000 becomes $14,622.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1968
$1.00
$1.46
$5.00
$7.31
$10.00
$14.62
$20.00
$29.24
$50.00
$73.11
$100
$146
$500
$731
$1,000
$1,462
$5,000
$7,311
$10,000
$14,622
$100,000
$146,218
$1,000,000
$1,462,185
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1968
Between 1949 and 1968, medical care rose the most, up 102.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 31.6%, against 46.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1968, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.02%
$146
Medical care
3.77%
$202
Transportation
2.34%
$155
Food
1.83%
$141
Apparel
1.46%
$132
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 1968
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 1949–1968 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
1960–1968
2.04%
17.6%
$146
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $121 by
1958, on its way to $146 in 1968; 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 1968, prices rose 4.2% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $146; the year's average CPI of 34.8 is the level
behind every 1968 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in 1968, up sharply from 1967’s
3.1% and the fastest pace in 17 years, as Vietnam War spending and a tight
labor market pushed inflation higher despite the Federal Reserve’s
earlier tightening. The year was marked by political violence: Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis on April
4, touching off rioting in more than 100 cities, and Robert F. Kennedy was
shot in Los Angeles on June 5, moments after winning California’s
Democratic presidential primary, and died the next day. Washington tried
to answer the inflation problem directly that June 28, when Congress
passed a 10% income tax surcharge, the Revenue and Expenditure Control
Act, temporarily raising taxes and cutting spending to cool an economy
overheated by war and Great Society outlays; prices kept accelerating
anyway. The cost of living rose in smaller, more visible ways too:
first-class postage climbed to 6 cents that January 7, and the minimum
wage rose to $1.60 an hour that February 1, the final step of the
increase Congress had set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1968 251.5% above their 1913 level.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1968: $100 is worth $146 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1968/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1968. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1968/