$100 in 1946 is worth $199 in 1970,
because prices increased 99.0% over that period, an average of
2.91% a year.
$100 in 1946 has
the same buying power as
$199
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
99.0%
Average inflation rate
2.91% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$199
Price difference ($100 base)
$98.97
CPI in 1946
19.5
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1946
8.33%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1946 → 1970
$199
$100 in 1970 → 1946
$50.26
What happened to prices between 1946 and 1970
Between 1946 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 19.5 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 99.0%, which works out to an average of
2.91% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1946 bought what
$0.50 buys in 1970: the 1946 dollar
lost 49.7% of its purchasing power over
these 24 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 1970 at the same ratio, 1.99: $1,000 becomes
$1,990, and $10,000 becomes $19,897.
Amount in 1946
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.99
$5.00
$9.95
$10.00
$19.90
$20.00
$39.79
$50.00
$99.49
$100
$199
$500
$995
$1,000
$1,990
$5,000
$9,949
$10,000
$19,897
$100,000
$198,974
$1,000,000
$1,989,744
Inflation by spending category, 1946–1970
Between 1946 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 172.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 72.1%, against 99.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1946
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1946 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.91%
$199
Medical care
4.26%
$272
Transportation
3.43%
$225
Food
2.89%
$198
Apparel
2.29%
$172
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 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.44% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1946–1970 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
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$199
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1946
$100 from 1946 had already become $148 by
1958, on its way to $199 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 1946 had the buying
power of $199; 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 1946 to 1970: $100 is worth $199 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1946 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1970/