$100 in 1949 is worth $170 in 1971,
because prices increased 70.2% over that period, an average of
2.45% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$170
in 1971
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
70.2%
Average inflation rate
2.45% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$170
Price difference ($100 base)
$70.17
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 1971
40.5
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 1971
4.38%
$100 in 1949 → 1971
$170
$100 in 1971 → 1949
$58.77
What happened to prices between 1949 and 1971
Between 1949 and 1971, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 40.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 70.2%, which works out to an average of
2.45% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.59 buys in 1971: the 1949 dollar
lost 41.2% of its purchasing power over
these 22 years.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1949 amount converts to 1971 at the same ratio, 1.70: $1,000 becomes
$1,702, and $10,000 becomes $17,017.
Amount in 1949
Value in 1971
$1.00
$1.70
$5.00
$8.51
$10.00
$17.02
$20.00
$34.03
$50.00
$85.08
$100
$170
$500
$851
$1,000
$1,702
$5,000
$8,508
$10,000
$17,017
$100,000
$170,168
$1,000,000
$1,701,681
Inflation by spending category, 1949–1971
Between 1949 and 1971, medical care rose the most, up 143.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 49.8%, against 70.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 1971, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.45%
$170
Medical care
4.14%
$244
Transportation
2.67%
$179
Food
2.21%
$162
Apparel
1.85%
$150
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1949: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1949 to 1971
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 4.38% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–1971 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$124
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$163
1970–1971
4.38%
4.4%
$170
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $124 by
1960, on its way to $170 in 1971; 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 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1971, prices rose 4.4% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $170; the year's average CPI of 40.5 is the level
behind every 1971 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 4.4% in 1971, down from 1970’s 5.7% as
the recession that started in December 1969 finally cooled demand. The bigger
economic story came that August 15, when President Nixon closed the “gold
window” that let foreign governments exchange dollars for gold, ending the
Bretton Woods system that had anchored the dollar since World War II. The
same address announced a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, the first
peacetime controls the country had seen, an attempt to break inflationary
expectations without the slower grind of tighter money. The “Nixon Shock,” as
it came to be known, let the dollar float against other currencies for the
first time and set the stage for a wage-and-price-control regime that would
run in various forms into 1973. Politically, the country lowered its voting
age that year: the 26th Amendment, ratified July 1, extended the vote to
18-year-olds, capping a campaign built on the argument that men old enough to
be drafted to Vietnam were old enough to vote for the people who sent them.
The Postal Service, independent since 1970’s reorganization, raised
first-class postage from 6 to 8 cents that May. A median household earned
$9,028 in 1971, up from $8,734 the year before, while gas held near 36 cents
a gallon and a new home sold for a median $25,200. Consumer prices stood
309.1% above their 1913 level by year’s end, still years away
from the double-digit inflation the controls were meant to prevent.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 1971: $100 is worth $170 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1971/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 1971. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-1971/