$100 in 1951 is worth $149 in 1970,
because prices increased 49.2% over that period, an average of
2.13% a year.
$100 in 1951 has
the same buying power as
$149
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
49.2%
Average inflation rate
2.13% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$149
Price difference ($100 base)
$49.23
CPI in 1951
26
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1951
7.88%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1951 → 1970
$149
$100 in 1970 → 1951
$67.01
What happened to prices between 1951 and 1970
Between 1951 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 26 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 49.2%, which works out to an average of
2.13% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1951 bought what
$0.67 buys in 1970: the 1951 dollar
lost 33.0% of its purchasing power over
these 19 years.
Consumer prices rose 7.9% in 1951, up sharply from 1950’s
1.3% and the fastest increase since 1947, as Korean War buying and a
defense spending surge hit an economy still adjusting to peacetime. Much
of the jump came early in the year, before the government stepped in: the
Office of Price Stabilization imposed a general ceiling on prices January
26, and the Wage Stabilization Board froze wages soon after, the broadest
peacetime controls since the war began that June. The year’s more lasting
change came in monetary policy. On March 4, the Treasury and the Federal
Reserve signed the Accord, ending the Fed’s wartime obligation to hold
down interest rates on government bonds and freeing the central bank to
fight inflation on its own terms for the first time since 1942, a shift
that would shape Fed independence for decades. Congress raised taxes that
October to help pay for the war: the Revenue Act of 1951, signed October
20, lifted individual and corporate income taxes along with a range of
excise taxes, the third increase in taxes since fighting began in Korea.
Consumer prices finished 1951 162.6% above their 1913
level. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at
75 cents an hour.
Every 1951 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.49: $1,000 becomes
$1,492, and $10,000 becomes $14,923.
Amount in 1951
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.49
$5.00
$7.46
$10.00
$14.92
$20.00
$29.85
$50.00
$74.62
$100
$149
$500
$746
$1,000
$1,492
$5,000
$7,462
$10,000
$14,923
$100,000
$149,231
$1,000,000
$1,492,308
Inflation by spending category, 1951–1970
Between 1951 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 113.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 34.9%, against 49.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1951
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1951 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.13%
$149
Medical care
4.08%
$214
Transportation
2.35%
$156
Food
1.75%
$139
Apparel
1.59%
$135
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1951: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1951 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.45% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1951–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1951, at end
1951–1960
1.45%
13.8%
$114
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$149
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1951
$100 from 1951 had already become $114 by
1960, on its way to $149 in 1970; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 5.7% in 1970, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1951 had the buying
power of $149; 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 1951 to 1970: $100 is worth $149 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1951-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1951 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1951-to-1970/