$100 in 1946 is worth $178 in 1968,
because prices increased 78.5% over that period, an average of
2.67% a year.
$100 in 1946 has
the same buying power as
$178
in 1968
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
78.5%
Average inflation rate
2.67% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$178
Price difference ($100 base)
$78.46
CPI in 1946
19.5
CPI in 1968
34.8
Inflation in 1946
8.33%
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
$100 in 1946 → 1968
$178
$100 in 1968 → 1946
$56.03
What happened to prices between 1946 and 1968
Between 1946 and 1968, the Consumer Price Index went from 19.5 to 34.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 78.5%, which works out to an average of
2.67% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1946 bought what
$0.56 buys in 1968: the 1946 dollar
lost 44.0% of its purchasing power over
these 22 years.
Consumer prices rose 8.3% in 1946, up sharply from 1945’s
2.3% and the sharpest increase since 1942, as wartime price controls
finally came apart. Congress let the Office of Price Administration’s
authority lapse at the end of June, reinstated a weaker version soon after,
then wound the whole system down through the rest of the year, releasing
years of pent-up demand into the price level almost at once. Meat was the
clearest casualty of the fight over decontrol: farmers withheld livestock
rather than sell at capped prices, producing severe shortages that spring
and summer until ceilings on meat were lifted that October, after which
supplies reappeared almost overnight. Labor cashed in its own wartime
restraint the same year. An estimated 4.6 million workers walked out at
some point in 1946, hitting steel, coal, automakers, and the railroads in
the largest strike wave in U.S. history, as unions pushed for wage gains to
offset cost-of-living increases controls could no longer contain. Amid the
turmoil, Congress made a less visible but lasting change to economic
policy: the Employment Act of 1946, signed that February, committed the
federal government to promoting maximum employment and created the Council
of Economic Advisers. Consumer prices stood 97.0% above their
1913 level, nearly double where the index had started 33
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
Every 1946 amount converts to 1968 at the same ratio, 1.78: $1,000 becomes
$1,785, and $10,000 becomes $17,846.
Amount in 1946
Value in 1968
$1.00
$1.78
$5.00
$8.92
$10.00
$17.85
$20.00
$35.69
$50.00
$89.23
$100
$178
$500
$892
$1,000
$1,785
$5,000
$8,923
$10,000
$17,846
$100,000
$178,462
$1,000,000
$1,784,615
Inflation by spending category, 1946–1968
Between 1946 and 1968, medical care rose the most, up 139.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 56.1%, against 78.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1946
spending costs in 1968, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1946 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.67%
$178
Medical care
4.04%
$239
Transportation
3.33%
$205
Food
2.66%
$178
Apparel
2.04%
$156
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1946: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1946 to 1968
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.44% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (2.04% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1946–1968 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1946, at end
1946–1950
5.44%
23.6%
$124
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$152
1960–1968
2.04%
17.6%
$178
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1946
$100 from 1946 had already become $144 by
1957, on its way to $178 in 1968; 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 1968, prices rose 4.2% and $100 from 1946 had the buying
power of $178; the year's average CPI of 34.8 is the level
behind every 1968 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in 1968, up sharply from 1967’s
3.1% and the fastest pace in 17 years, as Vietnam War spending and a tight
labor market pushed inflation higher despite the Federal Reserve’s
earlier tightening. The year was marked by political violence: Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis on April
4, touching off rioting in more than 100 cities, and Robert F. Kennedy was
shot in Los Angeles on June 5, moments after winning California’s
Democratic presidential primary, and died the next day. Washington tried
to answer the inflation problem directly that June 28, when Congress
passed a 10% income tax surcharge, the Revenue and Expenditure Control
Act, temporarily raising taxes and cutting spending to cool an economy
overheated by war and Great Society outlays; prices kept accelerating
anyway. The cost of living rose in smaller, more visible ways too:
first-class postage climbed to 6 cents that January 7, and the minimum
wage rose to $1.60 an hour that February 1, the final step of the
increase Congress had set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1968 251.5% above their 1913 level.
MLA: “Inflation from 1946 to 1968: $100 is worth $178 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1968/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1946 to 1968. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1968/