$100 in 1949 is worth $1,139 in 2021,
because prices increased 1038.5% over that period, an average of
3.44% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$1,139
in 2021
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1038.5%
Average inflation rate
3.44% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,139
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,039
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2021
270.97
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2021
4.70%
$100 in 1949 → 2021
$1,139
$100 in 2021 → 1949
$8.78
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2021
Between 1949 and 2021, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 270.97.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1038.5%, which works out to an average of
3.44% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.09 buys in 2021: the 1949 dollar
lost 91.2% of its purchasing power over
these 72 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 2021 at the same ratio, 11.39: $1,000 becomes
$11,385, and $10,000 becomes $113,853.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2021
$1.00
$11.39
$5.00
$56.93
$10.00
$114
$20.00
$228
$50.00
$569
$100
$1,139
$500
$5,693
$1,000
$11,385
$5,000
$56,926
$10,000
$113,853
$100,000
$1,138,529
$1,000,000
$11,385,294
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2021
Between 1949 and 2021, medical care rose the most, up 3449.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 196.6%, against 1038.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2021, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.44%
$1,139
Medical care
5.08%
$3,549
Food
3.40%
$1,111
Transportation
3.31%
$1,044
Apparel
1.52%
$297
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 2021
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 1949–2021 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
2020–2021
4.70%
4.7%
$1,139
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $437 by
1984, on its way to $1,139 in 2021; 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: 2021
In 2021, prices rose 4.7% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $1,139; the year's average CPI of 270.97 is the level
behind every 2021 figure on this page.
2021 was the year inflation stopped being background noise. Consumer prices
rose 4.7% on average for the year, and the pace kept building as the months
went on: by December, the 12-month rate had reached 7.0%, the highest since
1982. The proximate cause was a supply chain that could not keep up with a
fast-reopening economy. A global semiconductor shortage choked new car
production and pushed used vehicle prices up by more than a third, the
single largest line item in the year’s inflation math. Lumber, appliances,
and shipping capacity told versions of the same story: demand snapped back
faster than factories, ports, and truckers could handle it. Washington added
fuel in March with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, on top of the
relief already in the pipeline since 2020. For most of the year, the Federal
Reserve called the price surge “transitory,” a temporary reopening effect
expected to fade on its own, and held its policy rate near zero. By
November, with inflation still climbing, the Fed reversed course and began
winding down its bond purchases, the first step toward the rate hikes that
would follow in 2022. Gas averaged $3.01 a gallon for the year, up from
about $2.17 in 2020, while the federal minimum wage held at $7.25,
unchanged since 2009. In hindsight, 2021 reads as the hinge year: the point
where “transitory” inflation became the multi-year fight the Fed spent the
next two years trying to win.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2021: $100 is worth $1,139 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2021/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2021. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2021/