$100 in 1948 is worth $161 in 1970,
because prices increased 61.0% over that period, an average of
2.19% a year.
$100 in 1948 has
the same buying power as
$161
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
61.0%
Average inflation rate
2.19% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$161
Price difference ($100 base)
$61.00
CPI in 1948
24.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1948
8.07%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1948 → 1970
$161
$100 in 1970 → 1948
$62.11
What happened to prices between 1948 and 1970
Between 1948 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 24.1 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 61.0%, which works out to an average of
2.19% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1948 bought what
$0.62 buys in 1970: the 1948 dollar
lost 37.9% of its purchasing power over
these 22 years.
Consumer prices rose 8.1% in 1948, down slightly from 1947’s
14.4% but still the second straight year of sharp postwar inflation now
that wartime price controls were fully gone. Congress moved to stabilize a
different economy that April, passing the Economic Cooperation Act to fund
the plan Secretary of State George Marshall had proposed the year before:
more than $13 billion over four years to rebuild Western Europe and counter
Soviet influence. The Cold War turned tense closer to the plan’s target
that June, when Soviet forces cut off road and rail access to the
Western-controlled sectors of Berlin. American and British aircraft
responded almost immediately with an airlift of food, fuel, and supplies
that would keep the city running for nearly a year. Domestic politics
produced its own upset that November: nearly every poll and pundit had
predicted a Republican win, but Harry Truman defeated New York Governor
Thomas Dewey, handing the Chicago Tribune its famously wrong “Dewey Defeats
Truman” headline. Consumer prices finished the year 143.4% above their
1913 level and 40.9% above 1929’s
pre-Depression peak. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 40 cents an hour.
Every 1948 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.61: $1,000 becomes
$1,610, and $10,000 becomes $16,100.
Amount in 1948
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.61
$5.00
$8.05
$10.00
$16.10
$20.00
$32.20
$50.00
$80.50
$100
$161
$500
$805
$1,000
$1,610
$5,000
$8,050
$10,000
$16,100
$100,000
$160,996
$1,000,000
$1,609,959
Inflation by spending category, 1948–1970
Between 1948 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 136.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 39.3%, against 61.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1948
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1948 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.19%
$161
Medical care
3.98%
$236
Transportation
2.76%
$182
Food
1.87%
$150
Apparel
1.52%
$139
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1948: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1948 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (0.00% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1948–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1948, at end
1948–1950
0.00%
0.0%
$100
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$123
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$161
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1948
$100 from 1948 had already become $121 by
1959, on its way to $161 in 1970; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 7.9% in 1951, and prices fell 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1948 had the buying
power of $161; 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 1948 to 1970: $100 is worth $161 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1948-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1948 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1948-to-1970/