Value of $100 in 1935, adjusted to 1976

What happened to prices between 1935 and 1976

Between 1935 and 1976, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.7 to 56.9. Cumulatively, prices increased 315.3%, which works out to an average of 3.53% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1935 bought what $0.24 buys in 1976.

Consumer prices rose 2.2% in 1935, a second straight annual increase after 1934’s turnaround, though the CPI still sat well below its 1929 peak and the recovery remained uneven and incomplete. The year’s biggest legislative achievements aimed at making that unevenness less punishing. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, creating federal old-age pensions and unemployment insurance funded by a new payroll tax, the first federal safety net of its kind in U.S. history. That spring, the Works Progress Administration had already begun putting millions of unemployed Americans to work on public construction, arts, and infrastructure projects, becoming the largest jobs program of the New Deal. Congress added labor protections to the mix that July with the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing most private-sector workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. The human cost of the Dust Bowl was still mounting on the Plains: the storm known as Black Sunday hit on April 14, one of the worst of the decade, and continued drought kept driving farm families off land that could no longer support them. Consumer prices ended the year 38.4% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at 3 cents.

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The destination year: 1976

Consumer prices rose 5.8% in 1976, the calmest pace since 1972, as the economy pulled out of the 1973-75 recession and price growth settled to roughly half its 1974 peak. The recovery gave Americans room to celebrate: tall ships filled New York Harbor and fireworks lit cities nationwide on July 4 for the country’s bicentennial, a rare moment of shared celebration after Vietnam and Watergate. Politically, Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor running as a Washington outsider, defeated incumbent Gerald Ford that November, campaigning on restoring trust in government and bringing down inflation and unemployment together. In a California garage, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer that April to sell the Apple I, a bare circuit board aimed at electronics hobbyists, a business that looked far from consequential at the time. First-class postage, which had risen to 13 cents that past December 31, held there through the year, the longest stretch without a rate change since the Postal Service’s creation. A median household earned $12,686 in 1976, a new home sold for a median $44,200, and gas averaged 59 cents a gallon. Consumer prices stood 474.7% above their 1913 level, a calm interlude before inflation turned back up.

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