Between 1952 and 1964, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.5 to 31.
Cumulatively, prices increased 17.0%, which works out to an average of
1.32% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1952 bought what
$0.85 buys in 1964.
Consumer prices rose 1.9% in 1952, down sharply from 1951’s
7.9% as the price and wage controls imposed the year before held the cost
of living in check even with the Korean War still underway. Labor strife
tested those controls that spring: to head off a strike that could have
disrupted war production, President Truman ordered the government to
seize the steel industry that April, over the objections of steel
companies fighting the price the Office of Price Stabilization had set for
their product. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that June, a landmark limit on
presidential power, and steelworkers then struck for 53 days before a
settlement. Politics delivered the year’s biggest change that November:
Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, promising to “go to Korea” to
end the war and returning Republicans to the White House for the first
time since 1933. The Cold War’s technological edge sharpened that same
month, when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak
Atoll on November 1, a device hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945. Consumer prices finished 1952
167.7% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1952 spending costs in 1964, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1952 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.32%
$117
Medical care
3.28%
$147
Transportation
1.68%
$122
Food
0.78%
$110
Apparel
0.70%
$109
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1952: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Consumer prices rose 1.3% in 1964, matching 1963’s pace
even as a large federal tax cut took effect that year. The Revenue Act of
1964, signed February 26, lowered individual and corporate tax rates
significantly, the cut Kennedy had proposed the year before his death and
Johnson pushed through Congress as a Keynesian bet that lower taxes would
spur enough growth without stoking prices. Congress reshaped civil rights
law that July 2, when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination
based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in employment
and public accommodations, the most sweeping civil rights legislation
since Reconstruction. Vietnam policy shifted that August, when Congress
passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution after reported attacks on U.S. Navy
destroyers, authorizing Johnson to use military force in Vietnam without
a formal declaration of war. American pop culture changed that February
too: the Beatles landed at New York’s Kennedy Airport and played the Ed
Sullivan Show two days later for an estimated 73 million viewers,
igniting the “British Invasion.” Consumer prices finished 1964 213.1%
above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at 5
cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.25 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1952 to 1964: $100 is worth $117 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1964/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1952 to 1964. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1964/