Between 1990 and 2009, the Consumer Price Index went from 130.7 to 214.537.
Cumulatively, prices increased 64.1%, which works out to an average of
2.64% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1990 bought what
$0.61 buys in 2009.
In 1990, the median U.S. household earned about $29,900, gas averaged $1.15 a
gallon, and mailing a letter cost a quarter. Inflation ran hot at 5.4% for the
year, its highest rate since 1982, pushed up by an oil shock after Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, and the economy tipped into recession that summer. It was
the last gasp of elevated inflation before the long calm of the 1990s.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1990 spending costs in 2009, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1990 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.64%
$164
Medical care
4.50%
$231
Energy
3.41%
$189
Housing
2.80%
$169
Food
2.66%
$165
Core (all items less food & energy)
2.56%
$162
Transportation
2.11%
$149
Apparel
-0.17%
$96.76
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1990: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
2009 is the rarest kind of year in the modern price data: one where the cost
of living went down. The CPI fell 0.4%, the first full-year deflation
since 1955, as the Great Recession hollowed out demand and oil unwound from
its $147 spike the summer before. Gasoline that had cost over $4 a gallon in
July 2008 averaged $2.35 in 2009, and that energy collapse dragged the
12-month inflation rate to −2.1% by July, the deepest reading since 1950.
Policymakers treated falling prices not as relief but as a warning: deflation
raises the real weight of debt precisely when households are drowning in it,
which is why the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates near zero, began buying
bonds by the hundreds of billions, and Washington passed a $787 billion
stimulus. The medicine took: prices stabilized within a year, and 2009 remains
the textbook case of why central banks fear deflation more than moderate
inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1990 to 2009: $100 is worth $164 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1990-to-2009/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1990 to 2009. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1990-to-2009/