$100 in 1953 is worth $100 in 1955,
because prices increased 0.4% over that period, an average of
0.19% a year.
$100 in 1953 has
the same buying power as
$100
in 1955
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
0.4%
Average inflation rate
0.19% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$100
Price difference ($100 base)
$0.37
CPI in 1953
26.7
CPI in 1955
26.8
Inflation in 1953
0.75%
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
$100 in 1953 → 1955
$100
$100 in 1955 → 1953
$99.63
What happened to prices between 1953 and 1955
Between 1953 and 1955, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.7 to 26.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 0.4%, which works out to an average of
0.19% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1953 bought what
$1.00 buys in 1955: the 1953 dollar
lost 0.4% of its purchasing power over
these 2 years.
Consumer prices rose 0.8% in 1953, down from 1952’s 1.9% as
fighting in Korea wound toward a truce and three years of wartime buying
pressure finally eased. The year’s biggest shock came from Moscow: Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin died March 5 after nearly three decades in power, the
first change of Soviet leadership since the 1920s, opening a period of
uncertainty over how his successors would deal with the West. Washington
used the calmer backdrop to unwind its own wartime machinery. Authority
for the price and wage controls imposed in 1951 lapsed that spring, as the
Eisenhower administration, which favored free markets over controls, wound
down the Office of Price Stabilization. The war itself ended, on paper,
that July: negotiators signed an armistice July 27 at Panmunjom, halting
the fighting roughly along the original border near the 38th parallel. No
formal peace treaty ever followed, and North and South Korea remain
technically at war. Consumer prices finished 1953 169.7% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
Every 1953 amount converts to 1955 at the same ratio, 1.00: $1,000 becomes
$1,004, and $10,000 becomes $10,037.
Amount in 1953
Value in 1955
$1.00
$1.00
$5.00
$5.02
$10.00
$10.04
$20.00
$20.07
$50.00
$50.19
$100
$100
$500
$502
$1,000
$1,004
$5,000
$5,019
$10,000
$10,037
$100,000
$100,375
$1,000,000
$1,003,745
Inflation by spending category, 1953–1955
Between 1953 and 1955, medical care rose the most, up 5.2%, while transportation fell 2.6%, against 0.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1953
spending costs in 1955, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1953 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.19%
$100
Medical care
2.57%
$105
Apparel
-0.23%
$99.54
Food
-0.89%
$98.23
Transportation
-1.33%
$97.36
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1953: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1953
$100 from 1953 had already become $101 by
1954, on its way to $100 in 1955; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 0.7% in 1954, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1955, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1953 had the buying
power of $100; the year's average CPI of 26.8 is the level
behind every 1955 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the first annual decline since 1949,
as a strong rebound from the 1953-54 recession delivered growth without
much price pressure; automakers and appliance makers competed hard on
price for a booming consumer market. Organized labor consolidated that
December, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations merged on the 5th under President George Meany,
uniting roughly 15 million workers in the AFL-CIO after two decades as
rival federations. That same day, a different kind of organizing began in
Montgomery, Alabama: four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing
to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, the city’s Black community
began a boycott of its buses that would last more than a year and help
launch the civil rights movement’s mass phase. Markets got a scare that
September: news of Eisenhower’s heart attack on the 24th sent the Dow
Jones Industrial Average to its steepest one-day drop since the 1929
crash when trading resumed that Monday, before stocks recovered as the
president’s health improved. Consumer prices finished 1955 170.7% above
their 1913 level, essentially unchanged from where they
stood a year earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1953 to 1955: $100 is worth $100 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1955/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1953 to 1955. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1955/