$100 in 1949 is worth $794 in 2004,
because prices increased 693.7% over that period, an average of
3.84% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$794
in 2004
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
693.7%
Average inflation rate
3.84% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$794
Price difference ($100 base)
$694
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2004
188.9
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2004
2.66%
$100 in 1949 → 2004
$794
$100 in 2004 → 1949
$12.60
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2004
Between 1949 and 2004, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 188.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 693.7%, which works out to an average of
3.84% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.13 buys in 2004: the 1949 dollar
lost 87.4% of its purchasing power over
these 55 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 2004 at the same ratio, 7.94: $1,000 becomes
$7,937, and $10,000 becomes $79,370.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2004
$1.00
$7.94
$5.00
$39.68
$10.00
$79.37
$20.00
$159
$50.00
$397
$100
$794
$500
$3,968
$1,000
$7,937
$5,000
$39,685
$10,000
$79,370
$100,000
$793,697
$1,000,000
$7,936,975
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2004
Between 1949 and 2004, medical care rose the most, up 1995.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 195.1%, against 693.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2004, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.84%
$794
Medical care
5.69%
$2,095
Food
3.72%
$745
Transportation
3.70%
$738
Apparel
1.99%
$295
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 2004
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 1949–2004 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$549
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$724
2000–2004
2.34%
9.7%
$794
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $255 by
1977, on its way to $794 in 2004; 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: 2004
In 2004, prices rose 2.7% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $794; the year's average CPI of 188.9 is the level
behind every 2004 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in 2004, with a 29-cent jump in the price of gasoline, to $1.88 a
gallon, doing much of the work. Crude oil passed $50 a barrel in October on rising demand
from China and India. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in four years on
June 30, to 1.25%, and it kept going: 17 consecutive quarter-point increases took the rate to
5.25% by June 2006. Housing was already running ahead of incomes. The median household earned
about $44,300, up 2.3% from 2003, while the median new home sold for $221,000, up about 13%. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15, unchanged since
1997.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2004: $100 is worth $794 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2004/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2004. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2004/