$100 in 1949 is worth $305 in 1979,
because prices increased 205.0% over that period, an average of
3.79% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$305
in 1979
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
205.0%
Average inflation rate
3.79% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$305
Price difference ($100 base)
$205
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1979
72.6
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1979
11.35%
$100 in 1949 → 1979
$305
$100 in 1979 → 1949
$32.78
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1979
Between 1949 and 1979, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 72.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 205.0%, which works out to an average of
3.79% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.33 buys in 1979: the 1949 dollar
lost 67.2% of its purchasing power over
these 30 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 1979 at the same ratio, 3.05: $1,000 becomes
$3,050, and $10,000 becomes $30,504.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1979
$1.00
$3.05
$5.00
$15.25
$10.00
$30.50
$20.00
$61.01
$50.00
$153
$100
$305
$500
$1,525
$1,000
$3,050
$5,000
$15,252
$10,000
$30,504
$100,000
$305,042
$1,000,000
$3,050,420
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1979
Between 1949 and 1979, medical care rose the most, up 356.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 108.1%, against 205.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1979, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.79%
$305
Medical care
5.19%
$456
Food
3.95%
$320
Transportation
3.94%
$319
Apparel
2.47%
$208
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 1979
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.21% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1979 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
1970–1979
7.21%
87.1%
$305
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $130 by
1964, on its way to $305 in 1979; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 11.3% in 1979, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1979, prices rose 11.3% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $305; the year's average CPI of 72.6 is the level
behind every 1979 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 11.3% in 1979, the fastest pace since 1947 and the
decade’s second bout of double-digit inflation after 1974’s
11.0%. The trigger was familiar: the Iranian Revolution that January halted
Iran’s oil exports, and panic buying amplified the shortage, sending crude
prices sharply higher over the year and motorists back into gas lines, with
some states reviving the odd-even rationing last seen in 1974. Paul Volcker,
appointed Federal Reserve chairman that August, responded with a strategy
shift announced that October: the Fed would target the money supply directly
and let interest rates rise as high as necessary to break inflation, whatever
the short-term cost. That cost would arrive as a deep recession in 1981-82,
but by year’s end 1979 had already delivered enough turmoil on its own. A
reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
suffered a partial core meltdown that March 28, the worst commercial nuclear
accident in U.S. history, and on November 4, militants in Tehran stormed the
U.S. embassy and took 52 Americans hostage, beginning a 444-day crisis that
consumed the rest of Carter’s presidency. A median household earned $16,461
in 1979, a new home sold for a median $62,900, and gas jumped to 86 cents a
gallon. Consumer prices finished the decade 97.8% above where they stood in
1969, very nearly doubling in ten years, and stood 633.3%
above their 1913 level. The 1970s had opened with inflation
cooling from the 1969 spike and closed with prices rising faster than at any
point since 1947, setting up the Great
Inflation’s final act in 1980.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1979: $100 is worth $305 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1979/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1979. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1979/