London, England – November 2, 2026 – It took $130.61 in September 2026 to buy the goods and services that $100 bought in January 2020, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Felix Nikolas Prehn, economist and former investment banker, reads that figure beside his September 2026 paper, which measures the period from early 2020 to mid 2026. For that window, his paper puts the share of new household wealth that reached the bottom half of US households at 2.8 per cent.
The September price data
The $130.61 figure is the output of the BLS CPI Inflation Calculator for those two months. The calculator draws on the all items index for urban consumers across the US, before seasonal adjustment. September 2026 became its latest month with the price release of 14 October 2026.
That release put the all items index 3.7 per cent above its September 2025 level, before seasonal adjustment, up from a 12-month rise of 3.4 per cent in August. On the month, the seasonally adjusted index rose 0.6 per cent.
Over the single year to September, the calculator turns $100 into $103.74.
A deposit that stayed at $100 from January 2020 to September 2026 still shows $100 on its statement. The goods it could have bought in January 2020 cost $130.61 at September prices. No statement records that change, and no transaction takes place.
Cash and assets on two balance sheets
“The Hidden Regressive Tax” is a research report published by The Prehn Institute. Its ownership tables rest on the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts. Those accounts sort US households into four groups by wealth and estimate what each group owns.
For the second quarter of 2026, the paper shows deposits at 8 per cent of the bottom half’s own assets. Homes and consumer durables make up most of the rest. In corporate shares and mutual funds, the group owns 0.6 per cent of the national total.
The top 1 per cent sits at the other end. In its case deposits come to 5 per cent of assets, and corporate shares to more than half.
Higher consumer prices cut what a deposit buys for both groups. The groups differ in the assets held beside that deposit and in how those assets were priced over the same six years.
The gain from 2020 to 2026
The paper’s window runs from the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2026. Across those quarters, by the paper’s tables, US household wealth grew by $83.9 trillion. The top 1 per cent accounted for 36.7 per cent of the increase, and the bottom 50 per cent for 2.8 per cent.
Corporate shares account for most of the top group’s gain: $21.7 trillion, by the paper’s count. The bottom half held almost none of those shares when their prices rose.
The bottom half’s gain came mostly through homes, and it reached only the part of the group that owns one. The paper places the group’s 2.8 per cent above its long-run average. It links that result to pandemic payments made straight to households, strong demand for workers and rising home values.
Felix Nikolas Prehn assesses both sides of that record in the paper: “The household that holds assets pays the same inflation tax on its cash but receives a gain on its holdings that is many times larger.”
Scope of the calculator figure
The consumer price index tracks the cost of everyday consumption. What a household pays to acquire a home or shares sits outside it, and the paper treats that gap as a reason the official inflation rate understates the burden on households with few assets.
The $130.61 figure is a national average for urban consumers. A given household’s own costs may have risen faster or slower, depending on what it buys and where it lives.
The wealth figures are estimates. The Federal Reserve revises its distributional accounts, and the paper labels its figures per household as approximate.
The calculator has one gap. The BLS did not collect price data for October 2025 during a lapse in appropriations, and the calculator does not compute from that month. No comparison in this release uses that month.
Method
The price comparison sets $100 in January 2020 against September 2026, the most recent month published. The start month follows the paper, which dates each quarterly series by the first month of its quarter, so its first quarter of 2020 begins in January.
For the paper’s end point, June 2026, the calculator returns $129.45. For the paper’s full period from January 2000, it returns $199.61 at September 2026 prices.
The index behind the calculator covers urban consumers, a group that represents over 90 per cent of the US population, according to the BLS. It leaves out rural households outside metropolitan areas, farm families, the armed forces and people in institutions.
The wealth figures are in current dollars and are taken from the paper’s tables. The paper is a preprint, posted on Zenodo under a CC BY 4.0 licence, and its data appendix names each Federal Reserve, BLS and Census series behind its tables.
About Felix Nikolas Prehn
Felix Nikolas Prehn, also known as Nikolas Prehn, is an economist and former investment banker, born in Germany. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. He is also a painter and sculptor and a public advocate for animal rescue.
About The Prehn Institute
The Prehn Institute is an independent research institution founded by Felix Nikolas Prehn. He is a tech founder: he co-founded TradeVision.io (Acetrader Inc), founded Winston Daily and The Prehn Institute, and publishes weekly on YouTube. It publishes research on the financial markets and provides instruction in professional market practice.
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