$100 in 1949 is worth $821 in 2005,
because prices increased 720.6% over that period, an average of
3.83% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$821
in 2005
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
720.6%
Average inflation rate
3.83% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$821
Price difference ($100 base)
$721
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2005
195.3
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2005
3.39%
$100 in 1949 → 2005
$821
$100 in 2005 → 1949
$12.19
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2005
Between 1949 and 2005, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 195.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 720.6%, which works out to an average of
3.83% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.12 buys in 2005: the 1949 dollar
lost 87.8% of its purchasing power over
these 56 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 2005 at the same ratio, 8.21: $1,000 becomes
$8,206, and $10,000 becomes $82,059.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2005
$1.00
$8.21
$5.00
$41.03
$10.00
$82.06
$20.00
$164
$50.00
$410
$100
$821
$500
$4,103
$1,000
$8,206
$5,000
$41,029
$10,000
$82,059
$100,000
$820,588
$1,000,000
$8,205,882
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2005
Between 1949 and 2005, medical care rose the most, up 2083.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 192.9%, against 720.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2005, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.83%
$821
Medical care
5.66%
$2,184
Transportation
3.75%
$787
Food
3.69%
$763
Apparel
1.94%
$293
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 2005
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 1949–2005 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
2000–2005
2.55%
13.4%
$821
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $255 by
1977, on its way to $821 in 2005; 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: 2005
In 2005, prices rose 3.4% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $821; the year's average CPI of 195.3 is the level
behind every 2005 figure on this page.
Inflation rose to 3.4% in 2005, up from 2.7% in 2004, as gasoline averaged $2.30 a gallon,
compared with $1.88 the year before. Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, and with
Hurricane Rita weeks later it disrupted Gulf Coast refining, pushing the national average
price past $3 in early September. The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate at every meeting,
from 2.25% to 4.25%, to keep energy costs from feeding into other prices. The median household
earned about $46,300, up 4.5% from 2004, but the median new home price rose a further 9%, to
$240,900. In April, Congress passed a bankruptcy law that made it harder to clear debts. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents until January 2006, and the federal minimum wage stayed
at $5.15.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2005: $100 is worth $821 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2005/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2005. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2005/