$100 in 1914 is worth $388 in 1970,
because prices increased 288.0% over that period, an average of
2.45% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$388
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
288.0%
Average inflation rate
2.45% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$388
Price difference ($100 base)
$288
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1914 → 1970
$388
$100 in 1970 → 1914
$25.77
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1970
Between 1914 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 288.0%, which works out to an average of
2.45% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.26 buys in 1970: the 1914 dollar
lost 74.2% of its purchasing power over
these 56 years.
Consumer prices barely moved in 1914, rising just 1.0% for the year, even as
the country’s financial plumbing was rebuilt from the ground up. The Federal
Reserve Banks, created by the Federal Reserve Act signed the previous
December, opened their doors on November 16, giving the U.S. a central bank
for the first time since the 1830s. Weeks earlier, the outbreak of war in
Europe had spooked the New York Stock Exchange into closing for more than
four months, the longest shutdown in its history, as officials worried
European investors would dump American securities for gold. Domestically, the
bigger story was labor: Henry Ford’s decision to pay factory workers $5 a
day, announced in January, roughly doubled wages on his assembly lines and
pushed other manufacturers to raise pay just to keep workers from leaving. A
first-class stamp still cost 2 cents, a price that had held since 1885 and
would keep holding for three more years, even as the war reshaping Europe
began pulling the American economy toward the sustained wartime inflation of
1917.
Every 1914 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 3.88: $1,000 becomes
$3,880, and $10,000 becomes $38,800.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1970
$1.00
$3.88
$5.00
$19.40
$10.00
$38.80
$20.00
$77.60
$50.00
$194
$100
$388
$500
$1,940
$1,000
$3,880
$5,000
$19,400
$10,000
$38,800
$100,000
$388,000
$1,000,000
$3,880,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1970
Between 1914 and 1970, apparel rose the most, up 294.7%, while food rose the least, up 284.3%, against 288.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.45%
$388
Apparel
2.48%
$395
Food
2.43%
$384
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1914: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1914 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 12.25% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1914–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1914, at end
1914–1920
12.25%
100.0%
$200
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$167
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$140
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$241
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$296
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$388
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $163 by
1942, on its way to $388 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 1914 had the buying
power of $388; 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 1914 to 1970: $100 is worth $388 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1970/