$100 in 1949 is worth $521 in 1989,
because prices increased 421.0% over that period, an average of
4.21% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$521
in 1989
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
421.0%
Average inflation rate
4.21% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$521
Price difference ($100 base)
$421
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1989
124
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1989
4.82%
$100 in 1949 → 1989
$521
$100 in 1989 → 1949
$19.19
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1989
Between 1949 and 1989, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 124.
Cumulatively, prices increased 421.0%, which works out to an average of
4.21% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.19 buys in 1989: the 1949 dollar
lost 80.8% of its purchasing power over
these 40 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 1989 at the same ratio, 5.21: $1,000 becomes
$5,210, and $10,000 becomes $52,101.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1989
$1.00
$5.21
$5.00
$26.05
$10.00
$52.10
$20.00
$104
$50.00
$261
$100
$521
$500
$2,605
$1,000
$5,210
$5,000
$26,050
$10,000
$52,101
$100,000
$521,008
$1,000,000
$5,210,084
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1989
Between 1949 and 1989, medical care rose the most, up 908.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 190.7%, against 421.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1989, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.21%
$521
Medical care
5.95%
$1,009
Transportation
4.19%
$516
Food
4.11%
$500
Apparel
2.70%
$291
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 1989
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1989 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
1980–1989
4.65%
50.5%
$521
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $154 by
1969, on its way to $521 in 1989; 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: 1989
In 1989, prices rose 4.8% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $521; the year's average CPI of 124 is the level
behind every 1989 figure on this page.
1989 closed out a decade that began in economic crisis and ended in a long,
calmer expansion. Inflation for the year came in at 4.8%, higher than the
mid-decade lull but still roughly a third of the 13.5% peak that had opened
the decade in 1980. The federal minimum wage, unchanged at $3.35 an hour
since January 1981, had gone longer without an increase than at any point
since Congress created it, and had lost close to a third of its purchasing
power to inflation in the meantime; lawmakers would finally raise it to
$3.80 the following April. The decade’s other unfinished business came due
in August, when Congress passed FIRREA, the law that created the Resolution
Trust Corporation to seize and sell off the hundreds of savings and loan
institutions that a decade of deregulation and risky lending had left
insolvent, a bailout that eventually cost taxpayers over $100 billion. On
Wall Street, the recovery was already complete: the Dow Jones Industrial
Average closed 1989 at a record high, just over two years after Black
Monday’s 22.6% single-day crash, capping the bull market that had begun at
the Dow’s 776 low in August 1982. Between the S&L bailout, a wage floor
eroded by years without a raise, and a stock market at new highs, 1989
captured how unevenly the decade’s disinflation had been felt.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1989: $100 is worth $521 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1989/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1989. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1989/