$100 in 1949 is worth $405 in 1982,
because prices increased 305.5% over that period, an average of
4.33% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$405
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
305.5%
Average inflation rate
4.33% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$405
Price difference ($100 base)
$305
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1949 → 1982
$405
$100 in 1982 → 1949
$24.66
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1982
Between 1949 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 305.5%, which works out to an average of
4.33% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.25 buys in 1982: the 1949 dollar
lost 75.3% of its purchasing power over
these 33 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 1982 at the same ratio, 4.05: $1,000 becomes
$4,055, and $10,000 becomes $40,546.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1982
$1.00
$4.05
$5.00
$20.27
$10.00
$40.55
$20.00
$81.09
$50.00
$203
$100
$405
$500
$2,027
$1,000
$4,055
$5,000
$20,273
$10,000
$40,546
$100,000
$405,462
$1,000,000
$4,054,622
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1982
Between 1949 and 1982, medical care rose the most, up 525.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 139.7%, against 305.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.33%
$405
Medical care
5.71%
$625
Transportation
4.58%
$439
Food
4.21%
$390
Apparel
2.68%
$240
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 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1982 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
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$346
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$405
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $132 by
1965, on its way to $405 in 1982; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $405; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1982: $100 is worth $405 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1982/