Genealogists often
find references to money in old deeds and other documents. Even U.S. census
records frequently recorded estimates of a person's real estate. The natural
question is, "I wonder what that would equal in today's dollars?"
There is a Web site that can answer this question.
S. Morgan Friedman's
Inflation Calculator can
convert a U.S. dollar amount for any year from 1800 through 2001 into the
equivalent amount, adjusted for inflation, in any other year of that range. In
other words, if you find that your ancestor purchased land for $400 in 1805,
the Inflation Calculator will
tell you that the money he spent is equivalent to a purchase of $5735.65 in
2010.
The Inflation Calculator
only goes up to the year 2010, the last year for which inflation statistics are
available. This should be sufficient for genealogy purposes. The pre-1975 data
comes from the Consumer Price Index statistics published in the Historical
Statistics of the United States (USGPO, 1975). All data since then is from the
annual Statistical Abstracts of the United States. You can access the Inflation
Calculator at: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/.
The following
article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2012 by
Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.
