$100 in 1949 is worth $176 in 1972,
because prices increased 75.6% over that period, an average of
2.48% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$176
in 1972
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
75.6%
Average inflation rate
2.48% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$176
Price difference ($100 base)
$75.63
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1972
41.8
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1972
3.21%
$100 in 1949 → 1972
$176
$100 in 1972 → 1949
$56.94
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1972
Between 1949 and 1972, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 41.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 75.6%, which works out to an average of
2.48% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.57 buys in 1972: the 1949 dollar
lost 43.1% of its purchasing power over
these 23 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 1972 at the same ratio, 1.76: $1,000 becomes
$1,756, and $10,000 becomes $17,563.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1972
$1.00
$1.76
$5.00
$8.78
$10.00
$17.56
$20.00
$35.13
$50.00
$87.82
$100
$176
$500
$878
$1,000
$1,756
$5,000
$8,782
$10,000
$17,563
$100,000
$175,630
$1,000,000
$1,756,303
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1972
Between 1949 and 1972, medical care rose the most, up 152.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 52.7%, against 75.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1972, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.48%
$176
Medical care
4.10%
$252
Transportation
2.60%
$181
Food
2.29%
$168
Apparel
1.86%
$153
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 1972
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 3.79% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1972 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$163
1970–1972
3.79%
7.7%
$176
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $124 by
1960, on its way to $176 in 1972; 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 1972, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $176; the year's average CPI of 41.8 is the level
behind every 1972 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose just 3.2% in 1972, the calmest year of the decade and a
sharp break from the previous two years. The relief was largely engineered:
Nixon’s wage and price controls, imposed as a 90-day freeze in August 1971,
had settled into a series of “phases” that capped how much businesses could
raise prices through the election year. Economists would later argue the
controls mostly deferred inflation rather than curing it, storing up pressure
that broke loose once they were lifted. Nixon spent political capital on
foreign policy that year, traveling to Beijing that February in the first
visit by a sitting U.S. president to the People’s Republic of China, a trip
that began normalizing relations Washington had frozen since 1949. Closer to
home, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National
Committee’s offices at the Watergate complex that June 17, an event that drew
little attention at the time but would eventually force Nixon from office.
None of it dented his re-election bid: Nixon carried 49 states against
Democrat George McGovern that November, helped by an economy that, on paper,
looked more stable than it had in years. A median household earned $9,697 in
1972, a new home sold for a median $27,600, and gas held near 36 cents a
gallon for a third straight year. Consumer prices stood 322.2% above their
1913 level, a lull that would not survive contact with the
controls’ expiration and the oil shock still to come.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1972: $100 is worth $176 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1972/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1972. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1972/