$100 in 1931 is worth $255 in 1970,
because prices increased 155.3% over that period, an average of
2.43% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$255
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
155.3%
Average inflation rate
2.43% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$255
Price difference ($100 base)
$155
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1931 → 1970
$255
$100 in 1970 → 1931
$39.18
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1970
Between 1931 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 155.3%, which works out to an average of
2.43% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$0.39 buys in 1970: the 1931 dollar
lost 60.8% of its purchasing power over
these 39 years.
Consumer prices fell 9.0% in 1931, a sharp acceleration from the 2.3% decline
in 1930, as falling wages, collapsing farm prices, and a fresh
wave of bank failures fed a downward spiral that the still-contracting
economy could not shake. More than 2,000 banks failed during the year, far
more than in 1930, as depositors who had watched earlier banks go under
pulled their cash out of ones they feared were next. The crisis went
international that September, when Britain suspended the gold standard amid
a run on sterling. The Federal Reserve’s response made the domestic downturn
worse before it made anything better: to defend the dollar’s own gold
backing, the Fed raised its discount rate sharply that October, in two steps
from 1.5% to 3.5%, tightening credit at the exact moment the economy needed
the opposite. Not every headline that year was grim. The Empire State
Building opened its doors on May 1, briefly the tallest building in the
world, though so much of Manhattan’s office space sat vacant amid the
Depression that tenants stayed scarce and New Yorkers took to calling it the
“Empty State Building.” Consumer prices had now fallen for two straight
years and stood 53.5% above their 1913 level, down from the
68.7% margin of just twelve months before. First-class postage remained at 2
cents.
Every 1931 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.55: $1,000 becomes
$2,553, and $10,000 becomes $25,526.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.55
$5.00
$12.76
$10.00
$25.53
$20.00
$51.05
$50.00
$128
$100
$255
$500
$1,276
$1,000
$2,553
$5,000
$12,763
$10,000
$25,526
$100,000
$255,263
$1,000,000
$2,552,632
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1970
Between 1931 and 1970, food rose the most, up 203.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 169.1%, against 155.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.43%
$255
Food
2.89%
$304
Apparel
2.57%
$269
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1931: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1931 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.9% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1931–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1931, at end
1931–1940
-0.91%
-7.9%
$92.11
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$159
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$195
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$255
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $171 by
1951, on its way to $255 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 1931 had the buying
power of $255; 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 1931 to 1970: $100 is worth $255 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1970/