$100 in 1923 is worth $227 in 1970,
because prices increased 126.9% over that period, an average of
1.76% a year.
$100 in 1923 has
the same buying power as
$227
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
126.9%
Average inflation rate
1.76% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$227
Price difference ($100 base)
$127
CPI in 1923
17.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1923 → 1970
$227
$100 in 1970 → 1923
$44.07
What happened to prices between 1923 and 1970
Between 1923 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 126.9%, which works out to an average of
1.76% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1923 bought what
$0.44 buys in 1970: the 1923 dollar
lost 55.9% of its purchasing power over
these 47 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 1970 at the same ratio, 2.27: $1,000 becomes
$2,269, and $10,000 becomes $22,690.
Amount in 1923
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.27
$5.00
$11.35
$10.00
$22.69
$20.00
$45.38
$50.00
$113
$100
$227
$500
$1,135
$1,000
$2,269
$5,000
$11,345
$10,000
$22,690
$100,000
$226,901
$1,000,000
$2,269,006
Inflation by spending category, 1923–1970
Between 1923 and 1970, food rose the most, up 154.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 118.5%, against 126.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1923
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1923 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.76%
$227
Food
2.01%
$255
Apparel
1.68%
$218
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 1970
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 1923–1970 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$227
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1923
$100 from 1923 had already become $130 by
1947, on its way to $227 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 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: 1970
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1923 had the buying
power of $227; 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 1923 to 1970: $100 is worth $227 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1923 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1923-to-1970/