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What A Dollar Buys
About This Indicator
What Does This Chart Show?
What a dollar from any month since January 1913 would buy at the prices the chart ends on, by the Consumer Price Index. Drag to pick a month.
Why It Starts in 1913
The site's record of who held power begins in 1929; this chart has no party shading, so it starts where the Consumer Price Index does.
Why Does the Line Rise Into the 1930s?
Prices fell about a quarter from 1929 to 1933, so a dollar bought more. Falling prices also make debts fixed in dollars heavier, part of why the Depression ran so deep.
What It Does Not Say
A falling line is not a falling standard of living: pay has risen faster than prices over the century.
Key Idea
A slowly falling line is what policy aims for: in 2012 the Fed set a 2% inflation target, and 2% a year halves a dollar's purchasing power in about 35 years. Inflation nobody expected moves wealth from whoever is owed a fixed sum, such as a retiree on a fixed pension, to whoever owes one, such as a family with a fixed-rate mortgage.
Source: Computed here. The 1929 average of CUUR0000SA0 over each month's reading.
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