Between 1990 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 130.7 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 98.0%, which works out to an average of
2.30% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1990 bought what
$0.51 buys in 2020.
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 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1990 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.30%
$198
Medical care
3.94%
$319
Housing
2.53%
$211
Food
2.37%
$202
Core (all items less food & energy)
2.30%
$198
Energy
2.21%
$193
Transportation
1.73%
$167
Apparel
-0.17%
$95.15
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1990: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1990 to 2020: $100 is worth $198 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1990-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1990 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1990-to-2020/