$100 in 1944 is worth $220 in 1970,
because prices increased 120.5% over that period, an average of
3.09% a year.
$100 in 1944 has
the same buying power as
$220
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
120.5%
Average inflation rate
3.09% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$220
Price difference ($100 base)
$120
CPI in 1944
17.6
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1944
1.73%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1944 → 1970
$220
$100 in 1970 → 1944
$45.36
What happened to prices between 1944 and 1970
Between 1944 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.6 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 120.5%, which works out to an average of
3.09% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1944 bought what
$0.45 buys in 1970: the 1944 dollar
lost 54.6% of its purchasing power over
these 26 years.
Consumer prices rose just 1.7% in 1944, down from 1943’s
6.1% and the slowest increase of the war years, as price and wage controls
held the cost of living nearly flat even as the conflict reached its most
expensive phase. The war itself turned decisively that June, when more than
150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, opening the
long-planned second front against Nazi Germany. Congress used the same
month to plan for the war’s end, passing the GI Bill on June 22 to give
returning veterans money for college or vocational training, low-cost home
and business loans, and unemployment benefits, a package that would reshape
American housing and higher education for a generation. The following
month, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered at Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, and agreed to peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, itself
pegged to gold, creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
to manage the new system. Consumer prices stood 77.8% above their
1913 level, a cumulative wartime rise held down by controls
that would start unwinding the following year. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
Every 1944 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.20: $1,000 becomes
$2,205, and $10,000 becomes $22,045.
Amount in 1944
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.20
$5.00
$11.02
$10.00
$22.05
$20.00
$44.09
$50.00
$110
$100
$220
$500
$1,102
$1,000
$2,205
$5,000
$11,023
$10,000
$22,045
$100,000
$220,455
$1,000,000
$2,204,545
Inflation by spending category, 1944–1970
Between 1944 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 193.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 98.7%, against 120.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1944
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1944 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.09%
$220
Medical care
4.22%
$293
Transportation
3.36%
$236
Food
3.29%
$232
Apparel
2.68%
$199
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1944: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1944 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.38% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1944–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1944, at end
1944–1950
5.38%
36.9%
$137
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$168
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$220
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1944
$100 from 1944 had already become $160 by
1957, on its way to $220 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 1944 had the buying
power of $220; 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 1944 to 1970: $100 is worth $220 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1944-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1944 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1944-to-1970/