$100 in 1949 is worth $274 in 1978,
because prices increased 173.9% over that period, an average of
3.54% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$274
in 1978
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
173.9%
Average inflation rate
3.54% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$274
Price difference ($100 base)
$174
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1978
65.2
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1978
7.59%
$100 in 1949 → 1978
$274
$100 in 1978 → 1949
$36.50
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1978
Between 1949 and 1978, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 65.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 173.9%, which works out to an average of
3.54% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.37 buys in 1978: the 1949 dollar
lost 63.5% of its purchasing power over
these 29 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 1978 at the same ratio, 2.74: $1,000 becomes
$2,739, and $10,000 becomes $27,395.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1978
$1.00
$2.74
$5.00
$13.70
$10.00
$27.39
$20.00
$54.79
$50.00
$137
$100
$274
$500
$1,370
$1,000
$2,739
$5,000
$13,697
$10,000
$27,395
$100,000
$273,950
$1,000,000
$2,739,496
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1978
Between 1949 and 1978, medical care rose the most, up 317.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 99.5%, against 173.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1978, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.54%
$274
Medical care
5.05%
$418
Food
3.71%
$288
Transportation
3.60%
$279
Apparel
2.41%
$200
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 1978
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 6.70% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1978 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
1970–1978
6.70%
68.0%
$274
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $129 by
1963, on its way to $274 in 1978; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 11.0% in 1974, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1978, prices rose 7.6% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $274; the year's average CPI of 65.2 is the level
behind every 1978 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 7.6% in 1978, accelerating for a second straight year as
rising wages, a weakening dollar, and climbing energy costs outpaced the
Federal Reserve’s response. Fed chairman G. William Miller, appointed by
Carter that March, kept interest rates too low to slow the trend, a policy
later cited as one reason inflation kept building toward the following year’s
crisis. California voters responded to their own version of the problem that
June, passing Proposition 13 by nearly two to one to cap property tax rates
after years of rising home values had pushed tax bills up alongside them.
Foreign policy delivered one of the decade’s genuine breakthroughs: President
Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin together for thirteen days of negotiations at Camp David that
September, producing a framework for peace between the two countries that was
signed as a treaty the following March. First-class postage rose to 15 cents
that May 29, a rate that would hold longer than any other in the decade. The
year ended in tragedy: cult leader Jim Jones directed the mass murder-suicide
of more than 900 followers at a remote settlement in Guyana that November 18.
A median household earned $15,064 in 1978, a new home sold for a median
$55,700, and gas averaged 63 cents a gallon. Consumer prices stood 558.6%
above their 1913 level, with the decade’s worst inflation
still to come.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1978: $100 is worth $274 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1978/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1978. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1978/