$100 in 1950 is worth $161 in 1970,
because prices increased 61.0% over that period, an average of
2.41% a year.
$100 in 1950 has
the same buying power as
$161
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
61.0%
Average inflation rate
2.41% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$161
Price difference ($100 base)
$61.00
CPI in 1950
24.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1950
1.26%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1950 → 1970
$161
$100 in 1970 → 1950
$62.11
What happened to prices between 1950 and 1970
Between 1950 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
2.41% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1950 bought what
$0.62 buys in 1970: the 1950 dollar
lost 37.9% of its purchasing power over
these 20 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.3% in 1950, up from 1949’s 1.2%
decline, a mild gain that hid a sharp turn partway through the year. The
cost of living had been roughly flat through the spring, then jumped after
North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, setting off a wave of hoarding
and defense buying reminiscent of World War II shortages. The United
States entered the war within days under a United Nations mandate;
American and South Korean forces were pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter
that summer before a landing at Inchon that September reversed the front,
and China’s entry into the war that November turned it into a longer
stalemate. Congress moved to put the economy on a war footing that
September, passing the Defense Production Act, which gave the president
authority to direct industrial output toward the military and, if prices
kept climbing, to impose formal wage and price controls. Domestic policy
also expanded that year: the Social Security Amendments of 1950, signed
August 28, raised benefits across the board and extended coverage to
roughly 10 million more workers, the program’s first major expansion since
it began in 1935. Consumer prices finished 1950 143.4% above their
1913 level, matching 1948’s postwar high
after 1949’s brief decline. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stood at 75 cents an hour after January’s increase.
Every 1950 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.61: $1,000 becomes
$1,610, and $10,000 becomes $16,100.
Amount in 1950
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, 1950–1970
Between 1950 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 125.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 46.9%, against 61.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1950
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1950 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.41%
$161
Medical care
4.14%
$225
Transportation
2.54%
$165
Food
2.19%
$154
Apparel
1.94%
$147
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1950: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1950 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.08% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1950–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1950, at end
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$123
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$161
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1950
$100 from 1950 had already become $123 by
1960, 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 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1950 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 1950 to 1970: $100 is worth $161 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1950-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1950 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1950-to-1970/