Measuring Worth
A few weeks ago the RootsWeb newsletter mentioned a website to check out called MeasuringWorth.com. The website uses different calculators to help determine the "worth" of something during different time periods. Using these calculators, you can answer these questions.
* What Is the Annualized Growth Rate of Various Historical Economic Series?
* What Is the Relative Value? Five Ways to Compare the Worth of a United States Dollar,
1790 - 2005
* What Is the Relative Value? Five Ways to Compare the Worth of a United Kingdom
Pound, 1830 - 2005
* Computing 'Real Value' Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S.
Dollars, 1830 - 2005
* Computing Purchasing Power of the U.S. Dollar, 1774 - 2005
* Computing Purchasing Power of the British Pound, 1264 - 2005
* Computing Inflation Rates for the United States (1774 - 2005) and United Kingdom (Britain) (1264 - 2005)
I recently found one of my ancestors in the 1870 Census. In this census he said that his real estate value was $850.00. Using one of Measuring Worth's calculators led me to this answer for 2005 value.
In 2005, $850.00 from 1870 is worth:
$13,122.92 using the Consumer Price Index
$12,317.35 using the GDP deflator
$94,098.59 using the unskilled wage
$183,224.09 using the nominal GDP per capita
$1,359,105.26 using the relative share of GDP
I'm not really sure which of these 5 answers is most accurate. If it's one of the first 3, then he had a rather inexpensive home. The 4th one would be reasonable, but the 5th one would be quite nice and expensive.
Measuring Worth.com is currently developing a decision table, with associated expanded calculators, to help users determine which measure is best for their question.