American women won the right to vote in 1920, a few months in advance of the national election that anointed Warren G. Harding president of the United States. A lot has changed in the 95-plus years since then, including what a "Benjamin," or $100 bill, can buy.
That economic evolution is driven by inflation, an ongoing rise in the general level of prices as measured in monetary units. Occasionally, as they did during the Great Depression, prices experience deflation. The inflation — or deflation — rate is usually reported as the annual percentage growth or decline of some broad index of prices.
In the United States, that index is the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U. Through April 2016, the year-to-date inflation rate is 1.16 percent. It's also worth noting that inflation impacts wages as well, meaning we earn much more on average than we did almost a century ago. What's more, a wide variety of factors impact product pricing.
To illustrate how much the value of $100 has changed over the years, GOBankingRates used the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator to determine what a $100 bill could buy in today's world as its purchasing power changed over the decades. Starting in 1920, click through to see what $100 was worth the decade you were born.
Methodology: GOBankingRates used the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator (http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) to determine what $100 could buy in today's world as its purchasing power changed over the years, in five-year increments, from 1920 to 2015.
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