Consumer prices in the United States have doubled in eight years and sat almost flat for ten, sometimes within the same generation. Below is the cumulative price change for every decade since the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI-U series begins in 1913, using the same annual-average index the calculator draws on, plus the events behind each swing.
Every decade, cumulative change
| Decade | CPI (start → end) | Cumulative change |
|---|---|---|
| 1913-1920 | 9.9 → 20.0 | +102.0% |
| 1920s | 20.0 → 16.7 | -16.5% |
| 1930s | 16.7 → 14.0 | -16.2% |
| 1940s | 14.0 → 24.1 | +72.1% |
| 1950s | 24.1 → 29.6 | +22.8% |
| 1960s | 29.6 → 38.8 | +31.1% |
| 1970s | 38.8 → 82.4 | +112.4% |
| 1980s | 82.4 → 130.7 | +58.6% |
| 1990s | 130.7 → 172.2 | +31.8% |
| 2000s | 172.2 → 218.1 | +26.6% |
| 2010s | 218.1 → 258.8 | +18.7% |
| 2020s so far | 258.8 → 321.9 | +24.4% |
Wars, a depression, and a false start (1913-1940)
The CPI posted a 102% rise from 1913 to 1920, as the federal government borrowed and spent heavily to finance World War I, competing with civilian buyers for the same scarce goods. The reversal came fast: consumer prices fell 10.5% in 1921 alone, as wartime demand evaporated and the Federal Reserve raised rates to defend the gold standard. The rest of the 1920s were unremarkable by comparison, prices essentially flat, before the Great Depression turned flat into falling. The CPI posted a nearly 24% drop between 1929 and 1933, the worst sustained deflation in the index’s history, as bank failures and frozen credit pushed businesses to cut prices just to move goods nobody could afford. The index didn’t return to its 1929 level until 1937, and even by 1940, with a new world war already underway in Europe, it was still below where the 1930s had started.
Controls, a postwar surge, and a quiet decade (1940-1960)
Wartime price controls held the measured cost of living artificially flat through most of World War II, even as shortages and rationing told a different story at the register. The controls came off in 1946, and prices did what four years of regulation had prevented: inflation hit 14.4% in 1947 alone, the sharpest single-year jump outside the two world wars. By the time the 1940s closed, the CPI had climbed 72.1% for the decade, roughly matching the World War I run-up. The 1950s that followed were comparatively tame, a Korean War bump early on, then years of the kind of low, steady inflation policymakers would spend the rest of the century trying to get back to.
The Great Inflation (1960-1982)
Inflation accelerated through the 1960s as Vietnam War spending and Great Society programs pushed the decade to a 31.1% cumulative increase, more than the 1950s managed. What followed was worse. Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold in August 1971, wage-price controls came and went without controlling much, and the 1973 Arab oil embargo and 1979 Iranian revolution each sent energy prices spiking through an economy still learning to live without cheap oil. By the end of the 1970s, the CPI had more than doubled, up 112.4% for the decade, and the annual rate peaked at 13.5% in 1980 before Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve broke it with interest rates near 20%.
The Great Moderation, then a shock (1982-present)
Volcker’s medicine worked. The 1980s still closed up 58.6%, most of that damage done in the first two years before rates came down, and every full decade since has been calmer than the one before it: 31.8% in the 1990s, 26.6% in the 2000s even with a 2008 oil spike, and just 18.7% across the 2010s, the slowest full decade in the series. Along the way, 2009 delivered the CPI’s first annual decline since 1955, as the financial crisis crushed demand for everything from gasoline to housing. That decades-long moderation ended abruptly in the 2020s. Pandemic supply shocks, stimulus spending, and a fast reopening drove the 2020-to-2025 stretch to a 24.4% cumulative increase, more than the entire 2010s in half the time, with inflation averaging 8.0% in 2022 alone.
What the pattern says
No decade in this table resembles the one before it, and none of them looks like a straight line extrapolated from the last one. Inflation is driven by wars, oil shocks, policy choices, and financial crises, not a fixed law of economics running quietly in the background. Run any of these stretches through the calculator to see what a fixed sum of money from one decade was actually worth by the next, or read how the 2021-2023 surge compares to the decades before it.