$100 in 1955 is worth $110 in 1960,
because prices increased 10.4% over that period, an average of
2.01% a year.
$100 in 1955 has
the same buying power as
$110
in 1960
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
10.4%
Average inflation rate
2.01% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$110
Price difference ($100 base)
$10.45
CPI in 1955
26.8
CPI in 1960
29.6
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
$100 in 1955 → 1960
$110
$100 in 1960 → 1955
$90.54
What happened to prices between 1955 and 1960
Between 1955 and 1960, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.8 to 29.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 10.4%, which works out to an average of
2.01% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1955 bought what
$0.91 buys in 1960: the 1955 dollar
lost 9.5% of its purchasing power over
these 5 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 1960 at the same ratio, 1.10: $1,000 becomes
$1,104, and $10,000 becomes $11,045.
Amount in 1955
Value in 1960
$1.00
$1.10
$5.00
$5.52
$10.00
$11.04
$20.00
$22.09
$50.00
$55.22
$100
$110
$500
$552
$1,000
$1,104
$5,000
$5,522
$10,000
$11,045
$100,000
$110,448
$1,000,000
$1,104,478
Inflation by spending category, 1955–1960
Between 1955 and 1960, medical care rose the most, up 22.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 6.5%, against 10.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1955
spending costs in 1960, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1955 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.01%
$110
Medical care
4.15%
$123
Transportation
2.92%
$116
Food
1.53%
$108
Apparel
1.27%
$107
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 $110 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 the smallest rise was 0.7% in 1959.
In 1960, prices rose 1.7% and $100 from 1955 had the buying
power of $110; 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 1955 to 1960: $100 is worth $110 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1960/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1955 to 1960. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1960/