$100 in 1949 is worth $1,087 in 2020,
because prices increased 987.4% over that period, an average of
3.42% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$1,087
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
987.4%
Average inflation rate
3.42% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,087
Price difference ($100 base)
$987
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1949 → 2020
$1,087
$100 in 2020 → 1949
$9.20
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2020
Between 1949 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 987.4%, which works out to an average of
3.42% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.09 buys in 2020: the 1949 dollar
lost 90.8% of its purchasing power over
these 71 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 2020 at the same ratio, 10.87: $1,000 becomes
$10,874, and $10,000 becomes $108,744.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2020
$1.00
$10.87
$5.00
$54.37
$10.00
$109
$20.00
$217
$50.00
$544
$100
$1,087
$500
$5,437
$1,000
$10,874
$5,000
$54,372
$10,000
$108,744
$100,000
$1,087,441
$1,000,000
$10,874,412
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2020
Between 1949 and 2020, medical care rose the most, up 3405.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 189.4%, against 987.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.42%
$1,087
Medical care
5.14%
$3,506
Food
3.39%
$1,069
Transportation
3.16%
$911
Apparel
1.51%
$289
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 2020
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 1949–2020 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
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,087
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $437 by
1984, on its way to $1,087 in 2020; 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: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $1,087; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2020: $100 is worth $1,087 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2020/