US Inflation by Decade: 1913 to 2026 (Full CPI Data)
Two decades of the last century saw prices fall, not rise. Here is every decade since 1913, measured from BLS Consumer Price Index data.
US Inflation by Decade, 1913–2025
US consumer prices rose about 3,161% between 1913 and 2025 — an average of 3.16% a year. But the average hides enormous variation. The 1970s ran at 7.21% a year, while prices actually fell across both the 1920s and the 1930s. The 2020s so far are running at 4.52% a year, the highest since the 1980s.
| Decade | Period measured | Total price change | Average per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1910s | 1913–1919 | +74.7% | +9.75% |
| 1920s | 1920–1929 | −14.5% | −1.73% |
| 1930s | 1930–1939 | −16.8% | −2.02% |
| 1940s | 1940–1949 | +70.0% | +6.07% |
| 1950s | 1950–1959 | +20.7% | +2.12% |
| 1960s | 1960–1969 | +24.0% | +2.42% |
| 1970s | 1970–1979 | +87.1% | +7.21% |
| 1980s | 1980–1989 | +50.5% | +4.65% |
| 1990s | 1990–1999 | +27.5% | +2.73% |
| 2000s | 2000–2009 | +24.6% | +2.47% |
| 2010s | 2010–2019 | +17.2% | +1.78% |
| 2020s | 2020–2025 | +24.7% | +4.52% |
The Two Decades When Prices Fell
Inflation is so consistently assumed that the deflationary decades get forgotten. Prices in 1939 were lower than in 1920 — a full nineteen years with no cumulative price increase at all.
- The 1920s (−14.5% total). The decade opened with a sharp post-war deflation: prices fell 10.5% in 1921 alone, the steepest single-year drop in the series. The rest of the decade was roughly flat.
- The 1930s (−16.8% total). The Depression years produced back-to-back declines of 9.0% in 1931 and 9.9% in 1932. Prices did not regain their 1930 level until the war years.
Because of these two decades, a dollar in 1913 and a dollar in 1940 had roughly similar buying power — the index was 9.9 and 14.0 respectively, so only about 41% cumulative inflation across 27 years. Comparisons that span this period behave very differently from comparisons that span the 1970s.
The Highest and Lowest Single Years
Individual years are more extreme than any decade average:
| Year | Change | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1918 | +18.0% | First World War and post-war demand |
| 1917 | +17.4% | US entry into the First World War |
| 1920 | +15.6% | Post-war peak before the 1921 collapse |
| 1980 | +13.5% | Second oil shock; the modern peak |
| 1921 | −10.5% | Sharpest single-year decline in the series |
| 1932 | −9.9% | Depth of the Great Depression |
| 1931 | −9.0% | Great Depression |
The 1980 figure is the one most often cited as the modern high-water mark, and it is why a 1980 dollar converts so differently from a 1979 or 1981 dollar. If you are converting an amount from the late 1970s or early 1980s, the exact year matters more than it does in most other periods.
See what 1980 dollars are worth today, and compare against neighbouring years.
Open the 1980 pageWhat Happened Before 1913
Official CPI data begins in 1913. Reconstructed series suggest the nineteenth century looked nothing like the twentieth: the long-run trend was broadly flat to falling, punctuated by war-driven spikes.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis publishes a splice back to 1800 combining an index of prices paid by Vermont farmers (1800–1851), Ethel D. Hoover's consumer price index (1851–1890) and Albert Rees's cost of living index (1890–1912). On that series, the index in 1899 sits close to where it was in 1850 — half a century with essentially no net inflation — while the Civil War drove a spike of 23.3% in 1863 and 27.0% in 1864.
These reconstructions are useful for historical context but are not official statistics. The published series carries only whole-number precision, so a pre-1913 conversion should be read as approximate. Treat any calculator that presents an 1870 or 1899 figure to the cent as overstating its own accuracy.
The historical inflation pages cover 1800 onward and mark every pre-1913 year explicitly as an estimate.
Using Decade Data Well
- The long-run US average is about 3.16% a year, but no individual decade actually ran at that rate.
- Two decades — the 1920s and 1930s — saw prices fall overall.
- The 1970s were the inflationary outlier at 7.21% a year, not the norm.
- For projections, the Federal Reserve targets 2%; the historical average of about 3% is a reasonable central case.
- Decade averages smooth over years like 1980 (+13.5%) and 1921 (−10.5%), which dominate conversions spanning them.
All figures computed from BLS CPI-U annual averages on the 1982–84=100 base. Decade totals are measured from the first to the last year shown, so the 1910s row spans 1913–1919 and the 2020s row spans 2020–2025 and is incomplete. Annualised rates are geometric, not arithmetic averages. The underlying series was cross-checked against the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis 1800– table, which uses an independent 1967=100 base; 18 checkpoints from 1913–2024 agreed to within 0.41%.
- 1Consumer Price Index — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- 2Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPIAUCSL) — Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
- 3Consumer Price Index, 1800– — Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
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