$100 in 1945 is worth $216 in 1970,
because prices increased 115.6% over that period, an average of
3.12% a year.
$100 in 1945 has
the same buying power as
$216
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
115.6%
Average inflation rate
3.12% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$216
Price difference ($100 base)
$116
CPI in 1945
18
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1945
2.27%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1945 → 1970
$216
$100 in 1970 → 1945
$46.39
What happened to prices between 1945 and 1970
Between 1945 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 18 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 115.6%, which works out to an average of
3.12% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1945 bought what
$0.46 buys in 1970: the 1945 dollar
lost 53.6% of its purchasing power over
these 25 years.
Consumer prices rose 2.3% in 1945, up from 1944’s 1.7% but
still modest, a rate that understated how much pressure had built up behind
wartime price and wage controls, which stayed largely in place even as the
conflict that justified them came to a close. The year opened with a shock
at home: Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, less
than three months into an unprecedented fourth term, and Vice President
Harry Truman was sworn in that same afternoon. The war Roosevelt had led for
nearly four years ended without him. Germany surrendered on May 8, and
Japan surrendered on August 15, after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that month, with the formal signing aboard the USS Missouri on
September 2. Domestic policy kept moving even as the guns fell silent: the
federal minimum wage rose to 40 cents an hour that October 24, the final
step of the schedule Congress had built into the 1938 Fair Labor Standards
Act, up from 30 cents in 1939 and 25 cents at the law’s start. Consumer
prices stood 81.8% above their 1913 level, a gain that would
look modest next to what followed once wartime controls actually came off.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1945 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 2.16: $1,000 becomes
$2,156, and $10,000 becomes $21,556.
Amount in 1945
Value in 1970
$1.00
$2.16
$5.00
$10.78
$10.00
$21.56
$20.00
$43.11
$50.00
$108
$100
$216
$500
$1,078
$1,000
$2,156
$5,000
$10,778
$10,000
$21,556
$100,000
$215,556
$1,000,000
$2,155,556
Inflation by spending category, 1945–1970
Between 1945 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 185.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 88.5%, against 115.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1945
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1945 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.12%
$216
Medical care
4.29%
$286
Transportation
3.49%
$236
Food
3.33%
$227
Apparel
2.57%
$189
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1945: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1945 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.01% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1945–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1945, at end
1945–1950
6.01%
33.9%
$134
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$164
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$216
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1945
$100 from 1945 had already become $156 by
1957, on its way to $216 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 1945 had the buying
power of $216; 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 1945 to 1970: $100 is worth $216 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1945 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1945-to-1970/