$100 in 1933 is worth $298 in 1970,
because prices increased 198.5% over that period, an average of
3.00% a year.
$100 in 1933 has
the same buying power as
$298
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
198.5%
Average inflation rate
3.00% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$298
Price difference ($100 base)
$198
CPI in 1933
13
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1933
-5.11%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1933 → 1970
$298
$100 in 1970 → 1933
$33.51
What happened to prices between 1933 and 1970
Between 1933 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 13 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 198.5%, which works out to an average of
3.00% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1933 bought what
$0.34 buys in 1970: the 1933 dollar
lost 66.5% of its purchasing power over
these 37 years.
Consumer prices fell 5.1% in 1933, a smaller decline than 1932’s
but enough to complete a four-year slide of 24.0% from the 1929
peak. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the trough of that
contraction to March 1933, closing out the longest downturn in its
chronology, one that had run 43 months since August 1929. The bottom
arrived alongside a change in government: Franklin D. Roosevelt was
inaugurated March 4 and, within 48 hours, ordered every bank in the country
closed to halt a fresh round of runs. Congress passed the Emergency Banking
Act on March 9, letting solvent banks reopen under federal supervision, and
the panic that had been building for months broke almost immediately. The
administration moved on the currency next: Executive Order 6102, issued
April 5, required Americans to turn in most gold coin, bullion, and
certificates to the Federal Reserve, taking the country off the domestic
gold standard (formal devaluation of the dollar followed the next January).
Congress capped the year’s banking overhaul in June with the Banking Act of
1933, commonly called Glass-Steagall, which created the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation and separated commercial banking from investment
banking. Even after four straight years of falling prices, the CPI still
stood 31.3% above its 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
Every 1933 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.98: $1,000 becomes
$2,985, and $10,000 becomes $29,846.
Amount in 1933
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.98
$5.00
$14.92
$10.00
$29.85
$20.00
$59.69
$50.00
$149
$100
$298
$500
$1,492
$1,000
$2,985
$5,000
$14,923
$10,000
$29,846
$100,000
$298,462
$1,000,000
$2,984,615
Inflation by spending category, 1933–1970
Between 1933 and 1970, food rose the most, up 276.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 214.9%, against 198.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1933
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1933 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.00%
$298
Food
3.65%
$377
Apparel
3.15%
$315
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1933: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1933 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (1.06% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1933–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1933, at end
1933–1940
1.06%
7.7%
$108
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$185
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$228
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$298
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1933
$100 from 1933 had already become $200 by
1951, on its way to $298 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 2.1% in 1938, 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 1933 had the buying
power of $298; 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 1933 to 1970: $100 is worth $298 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1933-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1933 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1933-to-1970/