$100 in 1927 is worth $223 in 1970,
because prices increased 123.0% over that period, an average of
1.88% a year.
$100 in 1927 has
the same buying power as
$223
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
123.0%
Average inflation rate
1.88% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$223
Price difference ($100 base)
$123
CPI in 1927
17.4
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1927
-1.69%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1927 → 1970
$223
$100 in 1970 → 1927
$44.85
What happened to prices between 1927 and 1970
Between 1927 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.4 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 123.0%, which works out to an average of
1.88% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1927 bought what
$0.45 buys in 1970: the 1927 dollar
lost 55.2% of its purchasing power over
these 43 years.
Consumer prices fell 1.7% in 1927, a mild retreat after three years of
gradual increases and part of a shallow up-and-down pattern that ran through
the second half of the decade. Aviation delivered the year’s signature
moment: Charles Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field, New York, on May 20 and
landed at Le Bourget Field outside Paris roughly 33.5 hours later, the first
person to fly the Atlantic solo and nonstop. Detroit closed a chapter of its
own that May, when Ford halted the Model T’s production line after nearly 19
years and more than 15 million cars sold, idling tens of thousands of
workers while its factories retooled for the Model A. The Federal Reserve,
meeting with European central bankers that summer, cut its discount rate to
ease pressure on currencies still recovering from the war, a move later
cited by economists including Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz as fuel for
the stock market speculation that built through the following two years.
First-class postage held at 2 cents.
Every 1927 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.23: $1,000 becomes
$2,230, and $10,000 becomes $22,299.
Amount in 1927
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.23
$5.00
$11.15
$10.00
$22.30
$20.00
$44.60
$50.00
$111
$100
$223
$500
$1,115
$1,000
$2,230
$5,000
$11,149
$10,000
$22,299
$100,000
$222,989
$1,000,000
$2,229,885
Inflation by spending category, 1927–1970
Between 1927 and 1970, food rose the most, up 139.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 134.0%, against 123.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1927
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1927 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.88%
$223
Food
2.05%
$239
Apparel
2.00%
$234
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1927: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1927 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 1927–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1927, at end
1927–1930
-1.36%
-4.0%
$95.98
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$80.46
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$139
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$170
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$223
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1927
$100 from 1927 had already become $137 by
1949, on its way to $223 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 1927 had the buying
power of $223; 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 1927 to 1970: $100 is worth $223 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1927-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1927 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1927-to-1970/