$100 in 1939 is worth $279 in 1970,
because prices increased 179.1% over that period, an average of
3.37% a year.
$100 in 1939 has
the same buying power as
$279
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
179.1%
Average inflation rate
3.37% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$279
Price difference ($100 base)
$179
CPI in 1939
13.9
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1939
-1.42%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1939 → 1970
$279
$100 in 1970 → 1939
$35.82
What happened to prices between 1939 and 1970
Between 1939 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 13.9 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 179.1%, which works out to an average of
3.37% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1939 bought what
$0.36 buys in 1970: the 1939 dollar
lost 64.2% of its purchasing power over
these 31 years.
Consumer prices fell 1.4% in 1939, closing out a decade in which the CPI
fell in six years and rose in four, leaving prices 18.7% below their
1929 level even after the mid-decade recovery. Measured
against the start of the CPI’s modern record, prices still stood 40.4%
above their 1913 level, a reminder that even a decade defined
by deflation left the cost of living well above where it had been a
generation earlier. The decade’s final months reset the economic picture
entirely. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France
declared war two days later; the United States stayed formally neutral
under the Neutrality Acts, but Allied orders for war materiel began flowing
to American factories almost immediately, a demand shock that would do more
to end the Depression over the next few years than any peacetime relief
program had managed. Domestic policy kept building on the New Deal’s
framework, too: the federal minimum wage rose to 30 cents an hour that
October, the second step in the schedule set by the 1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act. Amid it all, the New York World’s Fair opened April 30 in
Queens, themed “The World of Tomorrow” and drawing tens of millions of
visitors with exhibits on television and other technologies promising a
more prosperous decade than the one just ending. First-class postage held
at 3 cents.
Every 1939 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.79: $1,000 becomes
$2,791, and $10,000 becomes $27,914.
Amount in 1939
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.79
$5.00
$13.96
$10.00
$27.91
$20.00
$55.83
$50.00
$140
$100
$279
$500
$1,396
$1,000
$2,791
$5,000
$13,957
$10,000
$27,914
$100,000
$279,137
$1,000,000
$2,791,367
Inflation by spending category, 1939–1970
Between 1939 and 1970, food rose the most, up 232.2%, while transportation rose the least, up 162.2%, against 179.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1939
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1939 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.37%
$279
Food
3.95%
$332
Medical care
3.93%
$330
Apparel
3.31%
$274
Transportation
3.16%
$262
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1939: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1939 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.58% a year, and slowest in the 1930s (0.72% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1939–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1939, at end
1939–1940
0.72%
0.7%
$101
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$173
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$213
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$279
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1939
$100 from 1939 had already become $193 by
1955, on its way to $279 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 1.2% in 1949, 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 1939 had the buying
power of $279; 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 1939 to 1970: $100 is worth $279 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1939-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1939 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1939-to-1970/