$100 in 1953 is worth $125 in 1967,
because prices increased 25.1% over that period, an average of
1.61% a year.
$100 in 1953 has
the same buying power as
$125
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
25.1%
Average inflation rate
1.61% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$125
Price difference ($100 base)
$25.09
CPI in 1953
26.7
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1953
0.75%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1953 → 1967
$125
$100 in 1967 → 1953
$79.94
What happened to prices between 1953 and 1967
Between 1953 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.7 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 25.1%, which works out to an average of
1.61% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1953 bought what
$0.80 buys in 1967: the 1953 dollar
lost 20.1% of its purchasing power over
these 14 years.
Consumer prices rose 0.8% in 1953, down from 1952’s 1.9% as
fighting in Korea wound toward a truce and three years of wartime buying
pressure finally eased. The year’s biggest shock came from Moscow: Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin died March 5 after nearly three decades in power, the
first change of Soviet leadership since the 1920s, opening a period of
uncertainty over how his successors would deal with the West. Washington
used the calmer backdrop to unwind its own wartime machinery. Authority
for the price and wage controls imposed in 1951 lapsed that spring, as the
Eisenhower administration, which favored free markets over controls, wound
down the Office of Price Stabilization. The war itself ended, on paper,
that July: negotiators signed an armistice July 27 at Panmunjom, halting
the fighting roughly along the original border near the 38th parallel. No
formal peace treaty ever followed, and North and South Korea remain
technically at war. Consumer prices finished 1953 169.7% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
Every 1953 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.25: $1,000 becomes
$1,251, and $10,000 becomes $12,509.
Amount in 1953
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.25
$5.00
$6.25
$10.00
$12.51
$20.00
$25.02
$50.00
$62.55
$100
$125
$500
$625
$1,000
$1,251
$5,000
$6,255
$10,000
$12,509
$100,000
$125,094
$1,000,000
$1,250,936
Inflation by spending category, 1953–1967
Between 1953 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 63.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 18.3%, against 25.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1953
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1953 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.61%
$125
Medical care
3.55%
$163
Transportation
1.64%
$126
Food
1.34%
$120
Apparel
1.21%
$118
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1953: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1953 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 1.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.48% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1953–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1953, at end
1953–1960
1.48%
10.9%
$111
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$125
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1953
$100 from 1953 had already become $111 by
1960, on its way to $125 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 1953 had the buying
power of $125; 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 1953 to 1967: $100 is worth $125 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1953 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1967/