$100 in 1936 is worth $240 in 1967,
because prices increased 140.3% over that period, an average of
2.87% a year.
$100 in 1936 has
the same buying power as
$240
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
140.3%
Average inflation rate
2.87% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$240
Price difference ($100 base)
$140
CPI in 1936
13.9
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1936
1.46%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1936 → 1967
$240
$100 in 1967 → 1936
$41.62
What happened to prices between 1936 and 1967
Between 1936 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.9 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 140.3%, which works out to an average of
2.87% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1936 bought what
$0.42 buys in 1967: the 1936 dollar
lost 58.4% of its purchasing power over
these 31 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1936, a third straight annual increase and part
of a slow, steady climb back from the 1933 trough, though
prices and the broader economy still had not fully recovered to their
pre-Depression levels. Voters delivered their verdict on that recovery in
November, reelecting Franklin D. Roosevelt over Republican Alf Landon in one
of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history: Roosevelt carried 46 of 48
states and won the Electoral College 523 to 8, a broad public endorsement of
the New Deal. Public works kept advancing that year, too. Hoover Dam, one of
the era’s signature projects, had been dedicated in September 1935, but its
first generators did not begin sending electricity over transmission lines
to Los Angeles until October 1936, a milestone that showed how long even a
celebrated project took to reach full operation. Consumer prices ended the
year 40.4% above their 1913 level, still 18.7% below the
1929 peak, a gap that would keep narrowing until a sharp new recession
interrupted the recovery the following year. First-class postage held at 3
cents.
Every 1936 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 2.40: $1,000 becomes
$2,403, and $10,000 becomes $24,029.
Amount in 1936
Value in 1967
$1.00
$2.40
$5.00
$12.01
$10.00
$24.03
$20.00
$48.06
$50.00
$120
$100
$240
$500
$1,201
$1,000
$2,403
$5,000
$12,014
$10,000
$24,029
$100,000
$240,288
$1,000,000
$2,402,878
Inflation by spending category, 1936–1967
Between 1936 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 176.5%, while transportation rose the least, up 132.9%, against 140.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1936
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1936 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.87%
$240
Medical care
3.33%
$276
Food
3.26%
$271
Apparel
2.90%
$243
Transportation
2.76%
$233
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1936: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1936 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (0.18% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1936–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1936, at end
1936–1940
0.18%
0.7%
$101
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$173
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$213
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$240
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1936
$100 from 1936 had already become $191 by
1952, on its way to $240 in 1967; 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: 1967
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1936 had the buying
power of $240; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1936 to 1967: $100 is worth $240 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1936 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1936-to-1967/