$100 in 1943 is worth $193 in 1967,
because prices increased 93.1% over that period, an average of
2.78% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$193
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
93.1%
Average inflation rate
2.78% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$193
Price difference ($100 base)
$93.06
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1943 → 1967
$193
$100 in 1967 → 1943
$51.80
What happened to prices between 1943 and 1967
Between 1943 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 93.1%, which works out to an average of
2.78% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.52 buys in 1967: the 1943 dollar
lost 48.2% of its purchasing power over
these 24 years.
Consumer prices rose 6.1% in 1943, a slower pace than 1942’s
surge but still well above anything the country had seen before the war.
The slowdown owed largely to the “Hold the Line” order, issued that April,
which froze most wages, prices, and rents at their current levels after the
previous year’s jump showed how far demand had outrun the existing
controls. Rationing grew more sophisticated alongside the freeze: starting
in February, a points system split scarce goods into red points for meat,
butter, and other fats and blue points for canned and processed foods,
letting households budget across categories instead of simply going without
once a flat quota ran dry. The government also changed how it collected the
taxes paying for all of it. The Current Tax Payment Act, signed June 9,
required employers to withhold federal income tax directly from paychecks
for the first time, smoothing the flow of wartime revenue and creating the
pay-as-you-go system still used today. Consumer prices stood 74.7% above
their 1913 level and 33.1% above 1933’s
Depression-era low. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
Every 1943 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.93: $1,000 becomes
$1,931, and $10,000 becomes $19,306.
Amount in 1943
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.93
$5.00
$9.65
$10.00
$19.31
$20.00
$38.61
$50.00
$96.53
$100
$193
$500
$965
$1,000
$1,931
$5,000
$9,653
$10,000
$19,306
$100,000
$193,064
$1,000,000
$1,930,636
Inflation by spending category, 1943–1967
Between 1943 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 151.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 83.5%, against 93.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.78%
$193
Medical care
3.92%
$252
Transportation
3.13%
$209
Food
2.92%
$199
Apparel
2.56%
$183
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1943: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1943 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 4.85% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (1.74% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1943–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1943, at end
1943–1950
4.85%
39.3%
$139
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$171
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$193
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1943
$100 from 1943 had already become $155 by
1955, on its way to $193 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 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1943 had the buying
power of $193; 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 1943 to 1967: $100 is worth $193 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1967/