$100 in 1947 is worth $150 in 1967,
because prices increased 49.8% over that period, an average of
2.04% a year.
$100 in 1947 has
the same buying power as
$150
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
49.8%
Average inflation rate
2.04% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$150
Price difference ($100 base)
$49.78
CPI in 1947
22.3
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1947 → 1967
$150
$100 in 1967 → 1947
$66.77
What happened to prices between 1947 and 1967
Between 1947 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 49.8%, which works out to an average of
2.04% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.67 buys in 1967: the 1947 dollar
lost 33.2% of its purchasing power over
these 20 years.
Consumer prices rose 14.4% in 1947, up from 1946’s 8.3% and
the fastest annual increase since 1920, as the last of the wartime price
controls disappeared and a year of strikes, wage catch-up, and lingering
shortages hit consumers all at once. Congress answered the previous year’s
strike wave that June, overriding President Truman’s veto to pass the
Taft-Hartley Act, which banned secondary boycotts and the closed shop and
let states adopt “right-to-work” laws curbing union power. American
attention was also turning outward. In a June 5 speech at Harvard,
Secretary of State George Marshall outlined a U.S.-funded plan to rebuild
Western Europe’s economies, an effort that would become known as the
Marshall Plan once Congress funded it the following year. The government
reorganized itself for the confrontation with the Soviet Union that plan was
partly designed to prevent: the National Security Act, signed July 26,
created the Department of Defense, the Air Force as a separate service, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Consumer
prices stood 125.3% above their 1913 level and 30.4% above
1929’s pre-Depression peak, up from just 1.2% above it four
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
Every 1947 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.50: $1,000 becomes
$1,498, and $10,000 becomes $14,978.
Amount in 1947
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.50
$5.00
$7.49
$10.00
$14.98
$20.00
$29.96
$50.00
$74.89
$100
$150
$500
$749
$1,000
$1,498
$5,000
$7,489
$10,000
$14,978
$100,000
$149,776
$1,000,000
$1,497,758
Inflation by spending category, 1947–1967
Between 1947 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 108.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 27.8%, against 49.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1947
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.04%
$150
Medical care
3.75%
$209
Transportation
2.98%
$180
Food
1.75%
$141
Apparel
1.23%
$128
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1947: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1947 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 2.62% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (1.74% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1947–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1947, at end
1947–1950
2.62%
8.1%
$108
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$133
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$150
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1947
$100 from 1947 had already become $126 by
1957, on its way to $150 in 1967; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 8.1% in 1948, and prices fell 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1947 had the buying
power of $150; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1947 to 1967: $100 is worth $150 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1967/