$100 in 1923 is worth $195 in 1967,
because prices increased 95.3% over that period, an average of
1.53% a year.
$100 in 1923 has
the same buying power as
$195
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
95.3%
Average inflation rate
1.53% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$195
Price difference ($100 base)
$95.32
CPI in 1923
17.1
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1923 → 1967
$195
$100 in 1967 → 1923
$51.20
What happened to prices between 1923 and 1967
Between 1923 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 95.3%, which works out to an average of
1.53% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1923 bought what
$0.51 buys in 1967: the 1923 dollar
lost 48.8% of its purchasing power over
these 44 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.8% in 1923, the first increase since 1920 and a sign
the postwar deflation had run its course; the economy settled into the
steadier growth that defined much of the rest of the decade. The year’s
biggest shock was political rather than economic: Warren Harding died August
2 in San Francisco while returning from a trip to Alaska, and Vice President
Calvin Coolidge was sworn in the next day at his family’s farmhouse in
Plymouth Notch, Vermont, administered the oath of office by his own father,
a notary public, by lamplight. Coolidge would go on to preside over the low,
stable inflation of the “Roaring Twenties.” The contrast with Germany that
year was stark. The Weimar Republic’s currency collapse reached its peak in
November 1923, with prices doubling every few days and a loaf of bread
costing billions of marks; Germany introduced a new currency, the
Rentenmark, that month to halt the spiral. U.S. consumer prices, by
comparison, had moved in single digits or held flat every year since 1921, a
gap that shaped how American economists would later think about what made
the postwar inflation of Europe so different from the mild swings at home.
First-class postage stayed at 2 cents.
Every 1923 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.95: $1,000 becomes
$1,953, and $10,000 becomes $19,532.
Amount in 1923
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.95
$5.00
$9.77
$10.00
$19.53
$20.00
$39.06
$50.00
$97.66
$100
$195
$500
$977
$1,000
$1,953
$5,000
$9,766
$10,000
$19,532
$100,000
$195,322
$1,000,000
$1,953,216
Inflation by spending category, 1923–1967
Between 1923 and 1967, food rose the most, up 121.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 88.2%, against 95.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1923
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1923 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.53%
$195
Food
1.82%
$221
Apparel
1.45%
$188
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1923: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1923 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1923–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1923, at end
1923–1930
-0.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$81.87
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$141
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$173
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$195
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1923
$100 from 1923 had already become $105 by
1945, on its way to $195 in 1967; 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 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1967
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1923 had the buying
power of $195; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1923 to 1967: $100 is worth $195 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1923 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1967/