$100 in 1918 is worth $257 in 1970,
because prices increased 157.0% over that period, an average of
1.83% a year.
$100 in 1918 has
the same buying power as
$257
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
157.0%
Average inflation rate
1.83% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$257
Price difference ($100 base)
$157
CPI in 1918
15.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1918
17.97%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1918 → 1970
$257
$100 in 1970 → 1918
$38.92
What happened to prices between 1918 and 1970
Between 1918 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.1 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 157.0%, which works out to an average of
1.83% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1918 bought what
$0.39 buys in 1970: the 1918 dollar
lost 61.1% of its purchasing power over
these 52 years.
1918 brought the steepest annual price increase the CPI had recorded:
consumer prices rose 18.0% for the year, edging out 1917’s already sharp
17.4% as the economy stayed at full wartime mobilization for most of the
year. A first-class stamp cost 3 cents, up from 2 cents the previous
November under the War Revenue Act’s wartime tax increases. The war itself
ended on November 11, when Germany signed an armistice with the Allied
powers after more than four years of fighting in Europe, but the inflation
built up over a year and a half of mobilization did not disappear along with
the fighting. The bigger public health story that year was the influenza
pandemic that reached the U.S. in a mild spring wave and then returned that
fall in a far deadlier form, eventually killing roughly 675,000 Americans,
more than the country’s combat losses in the war. It hit factories, docks,
and shops alongside households, adding disruption to an economy already
strained by wartime demand. Prices would keep climbing even after the
armistice, into the postwar surge of 1919.
Every 1918 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.57: $1,000 becomes
$2,570, and $10,000 becomes $25,695.
Amount in 1918
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.57
$5.00
$12.85
$10.00
$25.70
$20.00
$51.39
$50.00
$128
$100
$257
$500
$1,285
$1,000
$2,570
$5,000
$12,848
$10,000
$25,695
$100,000
$256,954
$1,000,000
$2,569,536
Inflation by spending category, 1918–1970
Between 1918 and 1970, food rose the most, up 134.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 116.8%, against 157.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1918
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1918 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.83%
$257
Food
1.65%
$235
Apparel
1.50%
$217
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1918: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1918 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 15.09% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1918–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1918, at end
1918–1920
15.09%
32.5%
$132
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$111
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$92.72
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$160
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$196
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$257
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1918
$100 from 1918 had already become $117 by
1944, on its way to $257 in 1970; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 15.6% in 1920, 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 1918 had the buying
power of $257; 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 1918 to 1970: $100 is worth $257 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1918-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1918 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1918-to-1970/