$100 in 1926 is worth $219 in 1970,
because prices increased 119.2% over that period, an average of
1.80% a year.
$100 in 1926 has
the same buying power as
$219
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
119.2%
Average inflation rate
1.80% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$219
Price difference ($100 base)
$119
CPI in 1926
17.7
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1926
1.14%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1926 → 1970
$219
$100 in 1970 → 1926
$45.62
What happened to prices between 1926 and 1970
Between 1926 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.7 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 119.2%, which works out to an average of
1.80% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1926 bought what
$0.46 buys in 1970: the 1926 dollar
lost 54.4% of its purchasing power over
these 44 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 1970 at the same ratio, 2.19: $1,000 becomes
$2,192, and $10,000 becomes $21,921.
Amount in 1926
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.19
$5.00
$10.96
$10.00
$21.92
$20.00
$43.84
$50.00
$110
$100
$219
$500
$1,096
$1,000
$2,192
$5,000
$10,960
$10,000
$21,921
$100,000
$219,209
$1,000,000
$2,192,090
Inflation by spending category, 1926–1970
Between 1926 and 1970, food rose the most, up 130.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 128.6%, against 119.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1926
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1926 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.80%
$219
Food
1.92%
$231
Apparel
1.90%
$229
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 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 1926–1970 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$219
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1926
$100 from 1926 had already become $136 by
1948, on its way to $219 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 1926 had the buying
power of $219; 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 1926 to 1970: $100 is worth $219 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1926 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1926-to-1970/