$100 in 1952 is worth $146 in 1970,
because prices increased 46.4% over that period, an average of
2.14% a year.
$100 in 1952 has
the same buying power as
$146
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
46.4%
Average inflation rate
2.14% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$146
Price difference ($100 base)
$46.42
CPI in 1952
26.5
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1952 → 1970
$146
$100 in 1970 → 1952
$68.30
What happened to prices between 1952 and 1970
Between 1952 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.5 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 46.4%, which works out to an average of
2.14% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1952 bought what
$0.68 buys in 1970: the 1952 dollar
lost 31.7% of its purchasing power over
these 18 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 1970 at the same ratio, 1.46: $1,000 becomes
$1,464, and $10,000 becomes $14,642.
Amount in 1952
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.46
$5.00
$7.32
$10.00
$14.64
$20.00
$29.28
$50.00
$73.21
$100
$146
$500
$732
$1,000
$1,464
$5,000
$7,321
$10,000
$14,642
$100,000
$146,415
$1,000,000
$1,464,151
Inflation by spending category, 1952–1970
Between 1952 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 103.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 36.1%, against 46.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1952
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1952 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.14%
$146
Medical care
4.03%
$204
Transportation
2.12%
$146
Food
1.75%
$137
Apparel
1.73%
$136
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 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1952–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1952, at end
1952–1960
1.39%
11.7%
$112
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$146
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1952
$100 from 1952 had already become $113 by
1961, on its way to $146 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 1952 had the buying
power of $146; 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 1952 to 1970: $100 is worth $146 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1952 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1970/