$100 in 1952 is worth $274 in 1979,
because prices increased 174.0% over that period, an average of
3.80% a year.
$100 in 1952 has
the same buying power as
$274
in 1979
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
174.0%
Average inflation rate
3.80% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$274
Price difference ($100 base)
$174
CPI in 1952
26.5
CPI in 1979
72.6
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
Inflation in 1979
11.35%
$100 in 1952 → 1979
$274
$100 in 1979 → 1952
$36.50
What happened to prices between 1952 and 1979
Between 1952 and 1979, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.5 to 72.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 174.0%, which works out to an average of
3.80% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1952 bought what
$0.37 buys in 1979: the 1952 dollar
lost 63.5% of its purchasing power over
these 27 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 1979 at the same ratio, 2.74: $1,000 becomes
$2,740, and $10,000 becomes $27,396.
Amount in 1952
Value in 1979
$1.00
$2.74
$5.00
$13.70
$10.00
$27.40
$20.00
$54.79
$50.00
$137
$100
$274
$500
$1,370
$1,000
$2,740
$5,000
$13,698
$10,000
$27,396
$100,000
$273,962
$1,000,000
$2,739,623
Inflation by spending category, 1952–1979
Between 1952 and 1979, medical care rose the most, up 304.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 95.2%, against 174.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1952
spending costs in 1979, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1952 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.80%
$274
Medical care
5.31%
$404
Food
3.86%
$278
Transportation
3.81%
$274
Apparel
2.51%
$195
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 1979
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.21% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1952–1979 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
1970–1979
7.21%
87.1%
$274
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1952
$100 from 1952 had already become $119 by
1965, on its way to $274 in 1979; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 11.3% in 1979, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1979, prices rose 11.3% and $100 from 1952 had the buying
power of $274; the year's average CPI of 72.6 is the level
behind every 1979 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 11.3% in 1979, the fastest pace since 1947 and the
decade’s second bout of double-digit inflation after 1974’s
11.0%. The trigger was familiar: the Iranian Revolution that January halted
Iran’s oil exports, and panic buying amplified the shortage, sending crude
prices sharply higher over the year and motorists back into gas lines, with
some states reviving the odd-even rationing last seen in 1974. Paul Volcker,
appointed Federal Reserve chairman that August, responded with a strategy
shift announced that October: the Fed would target the money supply directly
and let interest rates rise as high as necessary to break inflation, whatever
the short-term cost. That cost would arrive as a deep recession in 1981-82,
but by year’s end 1979 had already delivered enough turmoil on its own. A
reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
suffered a partial core meltdown that March 28, the worst commercial nuclear
accident in U.S. history, and on November 4, militants in Tehran stormed the
U.S. embassy and took 52 Americans hostage, beginning a 444-day crisis that
consumed the rest of Carter’s presidency. A median household earned $16,461
in 1979, a new home sold for a median $62,900, and gas jumped to 86 cents a
gallon. Consumer prices finished the decade 97.8% above where they stood in
1969, very nearly doubling in ten years, and stood 633.3%
above their 1913 level. The 1970s had opened with inflation
cooling from the 1969 spike and closed with prices rising faster than at any
point since 1947, setting up the Great
Inflation’s final act in 1980.
MLA: “Inflation from 1952 to 1979: $100 is worth $274 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1979/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1952 to 1979. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1952-to-1979/