$100 in 1920 is worth $194 in 1970,
because prices increased 94.0% over that period, an average of
1.33% a year.
$100 in 1920 has
the same buying power as
$194
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
94.0%
Average inflation rate
1.33% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$194
Price difference ($100 base)
$94.00
CPI in 1920
20
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1920
15.61%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1920 → 1970
$194
$100 in 1970 → 1920
$51.55
What happened to prices between 1920 and 1970
Between 1920 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 20 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 94.0%, which works out to an average of
1.33% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1920 bought what
$0.52 buys in 1970: the 1920 dollar
lost 48.5% of its purchasing power over
these 50 years.
1920 was the last year of the inflation that had built since the war began:
consumer prices rose 15.6% for the year, leaving the CPI more than double its
1913 starting level after seven straight years of increases.
The boom behind those increases turned to bust before the year was over. The
Federal Reserve, worried about speculation, pushed its discount rate to a
record 7% that spring, and wholesale prices, which had led the wartime
runup, began collapsing within months. The National Bureau of Economic
Research dates the resulting downturn from January 1920 to July 1921, one of
the shortest but steepest contractions in U.S. history, and consumer prices
followed into outright decline, falling 10.5% in 1921. Two constitutional
changes reshaped the country that year, too. The 18th Amendment’s ban on
alcohol took legal effect January 17, enforced under the Volstead Act
Congress had passed the previous October. Then, on August 18, Tennessee’s
ratification of the 19th Amendment secured women’s right to vote nationwide,
and women cast ballots in a presidential election for the first time that
November, when Warren Harding won on a promise to return the country to
“normalcy” after a decade of war, pandemic, and rising prices. First-class
postage held at 2 cents, unchanged since mid-1919.
Every 1920 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.94: $1,000 becomes
$1,940, and $10,000 becomes $19,400.
Amount in 1920
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.94
$5.00
$9.70
$10.00
$19.40
$20.00
$38.80
$50.00
$97.00
$100
$194
$500
$970
$1,000
$1,940
$5,000
$9,700
$10,000
$19,400
$100,000
$194,000
$1,000,000
$1,940,000
Inflation by spending category, 1920–1970
Between 1920 and 1970, food rose the most, up 86.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 37.4%, against 94.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1920
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1920 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.33%
$194
Food
1.26%
$187
Apparel
0.64%
$137
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1920: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1920 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1920–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1920, at end
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$83.50
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$70.00
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$121
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$148
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$194
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1920
$100 from 1920 had already become $88.00 by
1944, on its way to $194 in 1970; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 14.4% in 1947, 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 1920 had the buying
power of $194; 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 1920 to 1970: $100 is worth $194 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1920 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1920-to-1970/