$100 in 1953 is worth $111 in 1960,
because prices increased 10.9% over that period, an average of
1.48% a year.
$100 in 1953 has
the same buying power as
$111
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
10.9%
Average inflation rate
1.48% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$111
Price difference ($100 base)
$10.86
CPI in 1953
26.7
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1953
0.75%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1953 → 1960
$111
$100 in 1960 → 1953
$90.20
What happened to prices between 1953 and 1960
Between 1953 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.7 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 10.9%, which works out to an average of
1.48% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1953 bought what
$0.90 buys in 1960: the 1953 dollar
lost 9.8% of its purchasing power over
these 7 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.11: $1,000 becomes
$1,109, and $10,000 becomes $11,086.
Amount in 1953
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.11
$5.00
$5.54
$10.00
$11.09
$20.00
$22.17
$50.00
$55.43
$100
$111
$500
$554
$1,000
$1,109
$5,000
$5,543
$10,000
$11,086
$100,000
$110,861
$1,000,000
$1,108,614
Inflation by spending category, 1953–1960
Between 1953 and 1960, medical care rose the most, up 28.9%, while food rose the least, up 6.0%, against 10.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1953
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1953 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.48%
$111
Medical care
3.69%
$129
Transportation
1.69%
$112
Apparel
0.84%
$106
Food
0.84%
$106
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 $102 by
1956, on its way to $111 in 1960; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.3% in 1957, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1953 had the buying
power of $111; the year's average CPI of 29.6 is the level
behind every 1960 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1953 to 1960: $100 is worth $111 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1953 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1960/