$100 in 1943 is worth $224 in 1970,
because prices increased 124.3% over that period, an average of
3.04% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$224
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
124.3%
Average inflation rate
3.04% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$224
Price difference ($100 base)
$124
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1943 → 1970
$224
$100 in 1970 → 1943
$44.59
What happened to prices between 1943 and 1970
Between 1943 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 124.3%, which works out to an average of
3.04% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.45 buys in 1970: the 1943 dollar
lost 55.4% of its purchasing power over
these 27 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 1970 at the same ratio, 2.24: $1,000 becomes
$2,243, and $10,000 becomes $22,428.
Amount in 1943
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.24
$5.00
$11.21
$10.00
$22.43
$20.00
$44.86
$50.00
$112
$100
$224
$500
$1,121
$1,000
$2,243
$5,000
$11,214
$10,000
$22,428
$100,000
$224,277
$1,000,000
$2,242,775
Inflation by spending category, 1943–1970
Between 1943 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 203.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 112.9%, against 124.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.04%
$224
Medical care
4.20%
$304
Transportation
3.23%
$236
Food
3.12%
$229
Apparel
2.84%
$213
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 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 4.85% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1943–1970 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$224
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1943
$100 from 1943 had already become $157 by
1956, on its way to $224 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.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1943 had the buying
power of $224; 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 1943 to 1970: $100 is worth $224 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1970/