$100 in 1949 is worth $945 in 2011,
because prices increased 845.1% over that period, an average of
3.69% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$945
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
845.1%
Average inflation rate
3.69% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$945
Price difference ($100 base)
$845
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1949 → 2011
$945
$100 in 2011 → 1949
$10.58
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2011
Between 1949 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 845.1%, which works out to an average of
3.69% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.11 buys in 2011: the 1949 dollar
lost 89.4% of its purchasing power over
these 62 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 2011 at the same ratio, 9.45: $1,000 becomes
$9,451, and $10,000 becomes $94,512.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2011
$1.00
$9.45
$5.00
$47.26
$10.00
$94.51
$20.00
$189
$50.00
$473
$100
$945
$500
$4,726
$1,000
$9,451
$5,000
$47,256
$10,000
$94,512
$100,000
$945,122
$1,000,000
$9,451,218
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2011
Between 1949 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 2604.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 199.3%, against 845.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.69%
$945
Medical care
5.46%
$2,704
Transportation
3.72%
$961
Food
3.63%
$911
Apparel
1.78%
$299
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 2011
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 1949–2011 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$916
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$945
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $305 by
1979, on its way to $945 in 2011; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $945; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2011: $100 is worth $945 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2011/