$100 in 1953 is worth $102 in 1956,
because prices increased 1.9% over that period, an average of
0.62% a year.
$100 in 1953 has
the same buying power as
$102
in 1956
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1.9%
Average inflation rate
0.62% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$102
Price difference ($100 base)
$1.87
CPI in 1953
26.7
CPI in 1956
27.2
Inflation in 1953
0.75%
Inflation in 1956
1.49%
$100 in 1953 → 1956
$102
$100 in 1956 → 1953
$98.16
What happened to prices between 1953 and 1956
Between 1953 and 1956, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.7 to 27.2.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1.9%, which works out to an average of
0.62% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1953 bought what
$0.98 buys in 1956: the 1953 dollar
lost 1.8% of its purchasing power over
these 3 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 1956 at the same ratio, 1.02: $1,000 becomes
$1,019, and $10,000 becomes $10,187.
Amount in 1953
Value in 1956
$1.00
$1.02
$5.00
$5.09
$10.00
$10.19
$20.00
$20.37
$50.00
$50.94
$100
$102
$500
$509
$1,000
$1,019
$5,000
$5,094
$10,000
$10,187
$100,000
$101,873
$1,000,000
$1,018,727
Inflation by spending category, 1953–1956
Between 1953 and 1956, medical care rose the most, up 9.2%, while transportation fell 1.1%, against 1.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1953
spending costs in 1956, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1953 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.62%
$102
Medical care
2.99%
$109
Apparel
0.46%
$101
Food
-0.35%
$98.94
Transportation
-0.38%
$98.87
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 $102 in 1956; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 1.5% in 1956, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1956, prices rose 1.5% and $100 from 1953 had the buying
power of $102; the year's average CPI of 27.2 is the level
behind every 1956 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1956, a return to mild inflation after they had
fallen 0.4% in 1955, the only annual decline of the decade. The two years sat
in the calmest stretch of the postwar index, a lull between the Korean War
price surge earlier in the 1950s and the acceleration that would return in
the 1970s. Congress had already raised the wage floor into that calm: the
Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1955, signed the previous August, took
effect March 1 and lifted the federal minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an
hour, the first increase since 1950. Eisenhower signed a longer-lasting
commitment on June 29, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, funding 41,000 miles of
controlled-access highway at 90% federal cost to build the Interstate
System, the largest public-works program the country had undertaken. He won
a second term that November, carrying 41 states and about 57% of the
popular vote in a rematch against Adlai Stevenson. Abroad, the Suez Crisis
broke the calm on the supply side: Egypt nationalized the canal on July 26,
and after Israel invaded the Sinai on October 29 with British and French
forces following, the canal’s closure and damaged pipelines squeezed oil
shipments to Western Europe for months. Consumer prices stood 174.7% above
their 1913 level by 1956, up 94% since 1940
alone, even after a decade that had barely moved the index. First-class
postage held at 3 cents, unchanged since 1932.
MLA: “Inflation from 1953 to 1956: $100 is worth $102 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1956/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1953 to 1956. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1956/