Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Measuring Worth: Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to 2008

Want to know how far $50 went in 1899 as opposed to 2001? It would take $1,101.37 to buy as much bling in 2001 as you could with $50 in 1899. Historical purchasing statistics like this can be found at Measuring Worth, a private site created and maintained by Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson. From the site's About page>:

The mission of this site is to make available to the public the highest quality and most reliable historical data on important economic aggregates, with particular emphasis on nominal measures.

The data have been created using the highest standards of the fields of economics and history and are rigorously refereed by the most distinguished researchers in the fields. Beginning with the United States and United Kingdom and continuing with Japan and China, we will continue to add series from other countries under the same high standard.

The site provides calculators for the historical relative value of money in various currencies as well as for measuring historical changes in purchasing power, savings growth, inflation rates, as well as daily closing values for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dating back to 1896. Plus more statistics and calculators.

Rigorously researched, this site is a great place to find historical economic data, especially if your library does not have access to historical Wall Street Journal issues and data.

2 comments:

  1. I just came across your site. I am a teacher, and am always searching for new references. I was wondering if you are posting these daily reference sites on Twitter - would love to be updated that way, and be able to share your knowledge with many others. Thank you for this!

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