$100 in 1937 is worth $269 in 1970,
because prices increased 169.4% over that period, an average of
3.05% a year.
$100 in 1937 has
the same buying power as
$269
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
169.4%
Average inflation rate
3.05% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$269
Price difference ($100 base)
$169
CPI in 1937
14.4
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1937
3.60%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1937 → 1970
$269
$100 in 1970 → 1937
$37.11
What happened to prices between 1937 and 1970
Between 1937 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.4 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 169.4%, which works out to an average of
3.05% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1937 bought what
$0.37 buys in 1970: the 1937 dollar
lost 62.9% of its purchasing power over
these 33 years.
Consumer prices rose 3.6% in 1937, the fastest pace since before the
Depression and the fourth straight year of gains, leaving prices 10.8% above
their 1933 trough though still 15.8% below the
1929 peak. The recovery did not last the year. The National
Bureau of Economic Research dates a new business cycle peak to that May, the
start of what became known as the Recession of 1937-38. Policy tightened on
two fronts at once: the Federal Reserve had doubled bank reserve
requirements over the preceding year to head off inflation it worried was
building, and the federal government pulled back its own spending even as
new Social Security payroll taxes began draining money from paychecks
months before the first benefit checks went out. Together they choked off a
recovery that had not yet reached its pre-Depression footing. Not every
milestone that year was economic. The Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic
on May 27 after four years of construction, at the time the longest
suspension bridge span in the world, a rare bright spot in a year that would
end with the economy sliding backward again. First-class postage held at 3
cents.
Every 1937 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.69: $1,000 becomes
$2,694, and $10,000 becomes $26,944.
Amount in 1937
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.69
$5.00
$13.47
$10.00
$26.94
$20.00
$53.89
$50.00
$135
$100
$269
$500
$1,347
$1,000
$2,694
$5,000
$13,472
$10,000
$26,944
$100,000
$269,444
$1,000,000
$2,694,444
Inflation by spending category, 1937–1970
Between 1937 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 230.1%, while transportation rose the least, up 158.6%, against 169.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1937
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1937 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.05%
$269
Medical care
3.69%
$330
Food
3.38%
$299
Apparel
3.05%
$269
Transportation
2.92%
$259
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1937: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1937 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 1937–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1937, at end
1937–1940
-0.93%
-2.8%
$97.22
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$167
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$206
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$269
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1937
$100 from 1937 had already become $185 by
1953, on its way to $269 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 1937 had the buying
power of $269; 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 1937 to 1970: $100 is worth $269 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1937-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1937 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1937-to-1970/