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The purchasing power of money in the United States over time
Prices in the United States tell their own story between 1960 and 2024. By the World Bank series, $100.00 from 1999 equals $188.32 in 2024 money, and no year weighed as much as 1980, when inflation reached 13.5%. The average of the latest available decade is 2.9% a year, and the newest record, from 2024, shows 2.9%.
Annual inflation over the last three decades (1995 to 2024)
| Year | Inflation (%) |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 2.9 |
| 2023 | 4.1 |
| 2022 | 8 |
| 2021 | 4.7 |
| 2020 | 1.2 |
| 2019 | 1.8 |
| 2018 | 2.4 |
| 2017 | 2.1 |
| 2016 | 1.3 |
| 2015 | 0.1 |
| 2014 | 1.6 |
| 2013 | 1.5 |
| 2012 | 2.1 |
| 2011 | 3.2 |
| 2010 | 1.6 |
| 2009 | -0.4 |
| 2008 | 3.8 |
| 2007 | 2.9 |
| 2006 | 3.2 |
| 2005 | 3.4 |
| 2004 | 2.7 |
| 2003 | 2.3 |
| 2002 | 1.6 |
| 2001 | 2.8 |
| 2000 | 3.4 |
| 1999 | 2.2 |
| 1998 | 1.6 |
| 1997 | 2.3 |
| 1996 | 2.9 |
| 1995 | 2.8 |
What $100.00 from each decade is worth in 2024
| Decade | Annual average (%) | $100.00 back then, in 2024 money |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | 2.3 | $1,060.66 |
| 1970s | 7.1 | $807.96 |
| 1980s | 5.6 | $380.65 |
| 1990s | 3 | $240.08 |
| 2000s | 2.6 | $182.17 |
| 2010s | 1.8 | $143.86 |
| 2020s | 4.2 | $121.20 |
What the series shows
No period weighed more than the 1970s, which averaged 7.1% a year; at the opposite end, 2015 was the most stable year, at 0.1%. Adding everything from 2000 to the end of the series, prices rose 82.2%; a $100.00 purchase back then costs $182.17 in 2024. The series records 1 year of deflation, when prices fell instead of rising.
Want to see where this country sits on the global map? The archive Inflation around the world compares 40 series side by side.
Honest limits of these numbers
The index here is the World Bank national average annual CPI (FP.CPI.TOTL, base 2010 = 100), a whole-country average over whole years, blind to regional differences and specific months. For contracts, rents and legally binding adjustments, what counts is each country's official index (IBGE's IPCA in Brazil, the BLS CPI-U in the United States), not this series. Here the United States series starts in 1960 and ends in 2024, 65 years in total, and every country has its own slice of the dataset. The output currency is always the current one (USD); since the index is a continuous chain, past currency switches do not break the math.
Source: World Bank Open Data, indicators FP.CPI.TOTL and FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG, CC BY-4.0 license, snapshot of 2026-07-10. The United States equivalences are computed by this site from the ratio of the index values.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources