$100 in 1952 is worth $126 in 1967,
because prices increased 26.0% over that period, an average of
1.55% a year.
$100 in 1952 has
the same buying power as
$126
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
26.0%
Average inflation rate
1.55% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$126
Price difference ($100 base)
$26.04
CPI in 1952
26.5
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1952 → 1967
$126
$100 in 1967 → 1952
$79.34
What happened to prices between 1952 and 1967
Between 1952 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.5 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 26.0%, which works out to an average of
1.55% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1952 bought what
$0.79 buys in 1967: the 1952 dollar
lost 20.7% of its purchasing power over
these 15 years.
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.
Every 1952 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.26: $1,000 becomes
$1,260, and $10,000 becomes $12,604.
Amount in 1952
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.26
$5.00
$6.30
$10.00
$12.60
$20.00
$25.21
$50.00
$63.02
$100
$126
$500
$630
$1,000
$1,260
$5,000
$6,302
$10,000
$12,604
$100,000
$126,038
$1,000,000
$1,260,377
Inflation by spending category, 1952–1967
Between 1952 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 68.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 17.2%, against 26.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1952
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1952 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.55%
$126
Medical care
3.55%
$169
Transportation
1.74%
$130
Food
1.16%
$119
Apparel
1.07%
$117
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–).
Decade by decade: 1952 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 1.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1952–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1952, at end
1952–1960
1.39%
11.7%
$112
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$126
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1952
$100 from 1952 had already become $110 by
1959, on its way to $126 in 1967; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.3% in 1957, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1952 had the buying
power of $126; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1952 to 1967: $100 is worth $126 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1952 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1967/