$100 in 1949 is worth $901 in 2009,
because prices increased 801.4% over that period, an average of
3.73% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$901
in 2009
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
801.4%
Average inflation rate
3.73% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$901
Price difference ($100 base)
$801
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2009
214.537
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2009
-0.36%
$100 in 1949 → 2009
$901
$100 in 2009 → 1949
$11.09
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2009
Between 1949 and 2009, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 214.537.
Cumulatively, prices increased 801.4%, which works out to an average of
3.73% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.11 buys in 2009: the 1949 dollar
lost 88.9% of its purchasing power over
these 60 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 2009 at the same ratio, 9.01: $1,000 becomes
$9,014, and $10,000 becomes $90,142.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2009
$1.00
$9.01
$5.00
$45.07
$10.00
$90.14
$20.00
$180
$50.00
$451
$100
$901
$500
$4,507
$1,000
$9,014
$5,000
$45,071
$10,000
$90,142
$100,000
$901,416
$1,000,000
$9,014,160
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2009
Between 1949 and 2009, medical care rose the most, up 2437.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 194.3%, against 801.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2009, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.73%
$901
Medical care
5.54%
$2,538
Food
3.67%
$872
Transportation
3.55%
$811
Apparel
1.82%
$294
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 2009
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 1949–2009 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
2000–2009
2.47%
24.6%
$901
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $305 by
1979, on its way to $901 in 2009; 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: 2009
In 2009, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $901; the year's average CPI of 214.537 is the level
behind every 2009 figure on this page.
2009 is the rarest kind of year in the modern price data: one where the cost
of living went down. The CPI fell 0.4%, the first full-year deflation
since 1955, as the Great Recession hollowed out demand and oil unwound from
its $147 spike the summer before. Gasoline that had cost over $4 a gallon in
July 2008 averaged $2.35 in 2009, and that energy collapse dragged the
12-month inflation rate to −2.1% by July, the deepest reading since 1950.
Policymakers treated falling prices not as relief but as a warning: deflation
raises the real weight of debt precisely when households are drowning in it,
which is why the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates near zero, began buying
bonds by the hundreds of billions, and Washington passed a $787 billion
stimulus. The medicine took: prices stabilized within a year, and 2009 remains
the textbook case of why central banks fear deflation more than moderate
inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2009: $100 is worth $901 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2009/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2009. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2009/