Real 10-Year Treasury Yield — Daily CSV Download (Inflation-Adjusted Rates)

Download the complete U.S. real interest rates dataset covering 1953 to 2026.
This dataset includes the 10-year Treasury yield, annual CPI inflation, and the calculated real interest rate —
cleaned and structured for monetary policy research, quantitative analysis, and academic use.

Based on FRED series: GS10 (10Y Treasury) and CPIAUCSL (CPI-U) · Updated March 2026

Source: FRED series GS10 · Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following four columns.
Each row represents one calendar year.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.
The real rate is calculated as yield_10y − cpi_inflation (approximate Fisher equation).
Negative values indicate periods where inflation exceeded the nominal 10-year yield.

Latest Real Interest Rate

Latest available annual average. 2026 value will be updated when full-year data is published.

Real Interest Rates — Long-Term Context

The real interest rate — the nominal yield on government bonds minus consumer price inflation — is one of the most important variables in macroeconomics. It determines the true cost of borrowing, the return on savings, and the discount rate applied to all long-duration assets. When real rates are deeply negative, monetary conditions are highly accommodative; when they are significantly positive, policy is restrictive.

Over the 1953–2025 period, the U.S. 10-year real interest rate averaged approximately 2.0%. However, this long-run average masks dramatic regime shifts — from the deeply negative real rates of the 1970s inflationary era to the historically elevated real yields of the early 1980s Volcker disinflation, and more recently the prolonged period of near-zero or negative real rates during the 2010s quantitative easing era.

US Real Interest Rates Chart (1953–2026)

The chart below shows the full history of U.S. real interest rates. Periods of negative real rates (shaded) typically correspond to inflationary episodes where the Federal Reserve was behind the curve or deliberately pursuing accommodative policy.

Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED series GS10), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (CPI-U).

Real Interest Rates by Year (1953–2025)

The table below presents the complete annual dataset.
Each year shows the 10-year Treasury yield, CPI inflation rate,
and the calculated real interest rate.

Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED series GS10), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (CPI-U).
Real rate = 10Y yield − CPI inflation (approximate Fisher equation).
Negative real rates indicate periods where inflation exceeded the nominal yield.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.
Both files contain identical data: year, 10-year Treasury yield, CPI inflation, and real interest rate.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The 10-year Treasury yield is published in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database
under the series code GS10.
FRED datasets are commonly accessed using the fredgraph.csv query format:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=GS10

However, the raw FRED GS10 series provides only the nominal 10-year Treasury yield — not the inflation rate or the real interest rate.
The Eco3min dataset combines the GS10 yield with CPI-U inflation data (FRED series CPIAUCSL)
to produce a ready-to-use real interest rate series, structured as a clean four-column file
for immediate use in research or quantitative models.

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/gs10-us-10-year-treasury-yield-history-dataset-1953-2026.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format.
It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/gs10-us-10-year-treasury-yield-history-dataset-1953-2026.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url)

# Display first rows
print(df.head())

# Average real rate over the full period
avg_real = df["real_rate"].mean()
print(f"Average real interest rate (1953–2025): {avg_real:.2f}%")

# Negative real rate years
negative = df[df["real_rate"] < 0]
print(f"Negative real rate years: {negative['year'].tolist()}")

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/gs10-us-10-year-treasury-yield-history-dataset-1953-2026.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$real_rate)

# Negative real rate years
negative <- df[df$real_rate < 0, ]
print(negative)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Major Real Interest Rate Regimes (1953–2026)

1953–1965 — Stable positive real rates under Bretton Woods.
Real interest rates averaged approximately 2.5% during this period, anchored by low and stable inflation within the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. The 10-year yield hovered between 3% and 4%, while inflation rarely exceeded 2%. This was the baseline “normal” real rate environment that would not be seen again for decades.

1966–1980 — The Great Inflation and negative real rates.
As inflation accelerated through the late 1960s and 1970s, nominal yields failed to keep pace. Real rates turned deeply negative during the oil shocks — reaching −3.4% in 1974 and −2.0% in 1980. The Federal Reserve under Arthur Burns and G. William Miller was consistently behind the curve, allowing inflation expectations to become unanchored.

1981–2000 — Volcker disinflation and historically high real rates.
The Volcker shock produced the highest real interest rates in modern U.S. history. As inflation fell from 13.5% in 1980 to 3.2% in 1983, nominal yields declined more slowly — pushing the real rate above 8% in 1984. Real rates remained elevated throughout the 1980s and 1990s, averaging approximately 4%, as markets demanded a persistent inflation risk premium even as actual inflation remained contained.

2001–2019 — Secular decline toward zero.
Real interest rates fell steadily over two decades, driven by the savings glut, aging demographics, declining potential growth, and successive rounds of quantitative easing. By the late 2010s, real rates hovered near zero — a historically unprecedented configuration that compressed risk premia across all asset classes and fueled a sustained bull market in equities and bonds.

2020–2026 — Pandemic shock, negative real rates, and normalization.
The pandemic triggered the most deeply negative real rates since the 1970s: −3.25% in 2021 and −5.05% in 2022, as inflation surged while the Fed initially kept rates near zero. The subsequent tightening cycle restored positive real rates by 2024 (+1.31%), but the question of where the “neutral” real rate settles — the so-called r* debate — remains one of the most consequential open questions in monetary economics.

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and currency indicators.

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Sources

• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED database, series GS10
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)

Suggested Citation

Eco3min Research. (2026). Real Interest Rates History Dataset — 10Y Treasury minus CPI (1953–2026).

US Real Interest Rates History Dataset (10Y Treasury Yield – CPI Inflation)