$100 in 1913 is worth $392 in 1970,
because prices increased 291.9% over that period, an average of
2.43% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$392
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
291.9%
Average inflation rate
2.43% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$392
Price difference ($100 base)
$292
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1913 → 1970
$392
$100 in 1970 → 1913
$25.52
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1970
Between 1913 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 291.9%, which works out to an average of
2.43% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.26 buys in 1970: the 1913 dollar
lost 74.5% of its purchasing power over
these 57 years.
1913 is where this site’s price history begins, because it’s where the Bureau of Labor
Statistics’ own consumer price data begins. The CPI wasn’t published in real time back then;
the BLS built the earliest index retroactively from retail price records collected starting
in 1913, which makes every dollar figure on this site ultimately anchored to that year’s
prices. It was also the year the machinery of modern federal economic policy was built. The
16th Amendment, ratified in February, cleared the constitutional path for a federal income
tax, and the Revenue Act that followed in October imposed a top rate of just 7% on income
above $500,000, a narrow tax that would later be reshaped into the broad-based system that
funds the government today. In December, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, creating
the central bank that would eventually take on fighting inflation as one of its core jobs,
including the 19%-plus interest rates it deployed against the 1970s and early 1980s
price surge. Consumer life in 1913 was correspondingly simple by later
standards: a first-class stamp cost 2 cents, a price that held from 1885 all the way to
1917, and the Ford Motor Company introduced the moving assembly line at its Highland Park
plant that year, a manufacturing breakthrough that would spend the next decade driving down
the cost of a car faster than prices elsewhere were rising.
Every 1913 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 3.92: $1,000 becomes
$3,919, and $10,000 becomes $39,192.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1970
$1.00
$3.92
$5.00
$19.60
$10.00
$39.19
$20.00
$78.38
$50.00
$196
$100
$392
$500
$1,960
$1,000
$3,919
$5,000
$19,596
$10,000
$39,192
$100,000
$391,919
$1,000,000
$3,919,192
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1970
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.43%
$392
Food
2.43%
$392
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1913: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), apparel (1914–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1913 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1913, at end
1913–1920
10.57%
102.0%
$202
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$169
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$141
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$243
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$299
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$392
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $148 by
1941, on its way to $392 in 1970; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 18.0% in 1918, and prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1970
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $392; the year's average CPI of 38.8 is the level
behind every 1970 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 5.7% in 1970, up from 1969’s 5.5%, extending a
run of faster price growth that stretched back to the mid-1960s, even as a
recession that began in December 1969 pushed unemployment toward 6%. Prices
and joblessness rising together confounded the era’s economic thinking, which
held that policymakers could trade a little more inflation for a little less
unemployment; 1970 was an early sign that trade-off was breaking down, a
pattern that would harden into stagflation later in the decade. Washington
restructured how it delivered mail that year: after postal workers staged the
first strike ever by federal employees that March, Congress passed the Postal
Reorganization Act in August, replacing the cabinet-level Post Office
Department with the independent U.S. Postal Service. Environmental policy
also took shape in 1970. An estimated 20 million Americans marked the first
Earth Day on April 22, and the Environmental Protection Agency opened that
December to enforce the Clean Air Act and the pollution rules that followed.
The Vietnam War kept dividing the country: on May 4, National Guard troops
fired on antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four
students and setting off strikes on hundreds of campuses. A median household
earned $8,734 that year, a gallon of gas averaged 36 cents, and a first-class
stamp cost 6 cents, the rate it had held since 1968. Prices stood 291.9%
above their 1913 level by the end of 1970, a milestone that
would look almost mild against the decade still to come.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1970: $100 is worth $392 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1970/