$100 in 1949 is worth $965 in 2012,
because prices increased 864.7% over that period, an average of
3.66% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$965
in 2012
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
864.7%
Average inflation rate
3.66% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$965
Price difference ($100 base)
$865
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2012
229.594
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2012
2.07%
$100 in 1949 → 2012
$965
$100 in 2012 → 1949
$10.37
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2012
Between 1949 and 2012, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 229.594.
Cumulatively, prices increased 864.7%, which works out to an average of
3.66% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.10 buys in 2012: the 1949 dollar
lost 89.6% of its purchasing power over
these 63 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 2012 at the same ratio, 9.65: $1,000 becomes
$9,647, and $10,000 becomes $96,468.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2012
$1.00
$9.65
$5.00
$48.23
$10.00
$96.47
$20.00
$193
$50.00
$482
$100
$965
$500
$4,823
$1,000
$9,647
$5,000
$48,234
$10,000
$96,468
$100,000
$964,681
$1,000,000
$9,646,807
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2012
Between 1949 and 2012, medical care rose the most, up 2703.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 209.5%, against 864.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2012, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.66%
$965
Medical care
5.43%
$2,804
Transportation
3.69%
$983
Food
3.61%
$935
Apparel
1.81%
$309
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 2012
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 1949–2012 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
2010–2012
2.61%
5.3%
$965
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $305 by
1979, on its way to $965 in 2012; 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: 2012
In 2012, prices rose 2.1% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $965; the year's average CPI of 229.594 is the level
behind every 2012 figure on this page.
2012 put a number on what the Federal Reserve was aiming for. In January the
Fed announced a 2% inflation target, and consumer prices rose 2.1% for the
year, almost exactly on it. Gasoline averaged $3.62 a gallon, another annual
high, but the pace of increase cooled from 2011’s 3.2% as food and core prices
grew more slowly.
The bigger story was housing and jobs. Home prices began to recover, and the
median new home sold for about $245,200, up from $227,200 the year before.
Median household income was $51,017. The federal minimum wage held at $7.25,
and a first-class stamp rose to 45 cents.
In September the Fed started a third round of asset purchases, this one with
no fixed end date, aimed at lowering unemployment. Overseas, the European
Central Bank’s July pledge to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro calmed
bond markets. A summer drought across the Midwest drove corn and soybean
prices to records, a shock that reached grocery shelves only partly, because
most of what shoppers pay for food covers processing and transport rather than
raw crops.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2012: $100 is worth $965 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2012/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2012. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2012/