$100 in 1955 is worth $109 in 1959,
because prices increased 8.6% over that period, an average of
2.08% a year.
$100 in 1955 has
the same buying power as
$109
in 1959
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
8.6%
Average inflation rate
2.08% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$109
Price difference ($100 base)
$8.58
CPI in 1955
26.8
CPI in 1959
29.1
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
$100 in 1955 → 1959
$109
$100 in 1959 → 1955
$92.10
What happened to prices between 1955 and 1959
Between 1955 and 1959, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.8 to 29.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 8.6%, which works out to an average of
2.08% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1955 bought what
$0.92 buys in 1959: the 1955 dollar
lost 7.9% of its purchasing power over
these 4 years.
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.
Every 1955 amount converts to 1959 at the same ratio, 1.09: $1,000 becomes
$1,086, and $10,000 becomes $10,858.
Amount in 1955
Value in 1959
$1.00
$1.09
$5.00
$5.43
$10.00
$10.86
$20.00
$21.72
$50.00
$54.29
$100
$109
$500
$543
$1,000
$1,086
$5,000
$5,429
$10,000
$10,858
$100,000
$108,582
$1,000,000
$1,085,821
Inflation by spending category, 1955–1959
Between 1955 and 1959, medical care rose the most, up 18.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 4.9%, against 8.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1955
spending costs in 1959, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1955 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.08%
$109
Medical care
4.25%
$118
Transportation
3.67%
$116
Food
1.67%
$107
Apparel
1.20%
$105
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1955: 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 1955
$100 from 1955 had already become $105 by
1957, on its way to $109 in 1959; 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 the smallest rise was 0.7% in 1959.
In 1959, prices rose 0.7% and $100 from 1955 had the buying
power of $109; the year's average CPI of 29.1 is the level
behind every 1959 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1955 to 1959: $100 is worth $109 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1959/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1955 to 1959. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1959/