$100 in 1926 is worth $189 in 1967,
because prices increased 88.7% over that period, an average of
1.56% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$189
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
88.7%
Average inflation rate
1.56% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$189
Price difference ($100 base)
$88.70
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1926 → 1967
$189
$100 in 1967 → 1926
$52.99
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1967
Between 1926 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 88.7%, which works out to an average of
1.56% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$0.53 buys in 1967: the 1926 dollar
lost 47.0% of its purchasing power over
these 41 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.1% in 1926, a third straight year of mild inflation
and part of the price stability that defined the middle of the decade.
Florida’s real estate boom, which had peaked the previous year on
speculative buying of undeveloped land, ended abruptly that September when
the Great Miami Hurricane made landfall near the city, killing hundreds and
wrecking the market for land whose value had rested on continued
speculation rather than anything underneath it. In Detroit, Henry Ford moved
his company to a five-day, 40-hour work week without cutting pay, a break
from the standard six-day schedule that other large employers would
gradually adopt over the following decades; Ford argued publicly that
workers with more leisure time would also become better customers for the
cars his factories built. Consumer prices remained low enough by historical
standards that a first-class stamp still cost just 2 cents, the same price
it had held since mid-1919.
Every 1926 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.89: $1,000 becomes
$1,887, and $10,000 becomes $18,870.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.89
$5.00
$9.44
$10.00
$18.87
$20.00
$37.74
$50.00
$94.35
$100
$189
$500
$944
$1,000
$1,887
$5,000
$9,435
$10,000
$18,870
$100,000
$188,701
$1,000,000
$1,887,006
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1967
Between 1926 and 1967, food rose the most, up 100.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 96.9%, against 88.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.56%
$189
Food
1.71%
$201
Apparel
1.67%
$197
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1926: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1926 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 1926–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1926, at end
1926–1930
-1.44%
-5.6%
$94.35
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$79.10
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$136
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$167
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$189
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $110 by
1946, on its way to $189 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 1926 had the buying
power of $189; 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 1926 to 1967: $100 is worth $189 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1967/