$100 in 1953 is worth $145 in 1970,
because prices increased 45.3% over that period, an average of
2.22% a year.
$100 in 1953 has
the same buying power as
$145
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
45.3%
Average inflation rate
2.22% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$145
Price difference ($100 base)
$45.32
CPI in 1953
26.7
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1953
0.75%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1953 → 1970
$145
$100 in 1970 → 1953
$68.81
What happened to prices between 1953 and 1970
Between 1953 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.7 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 45.3%, which works out to an average of
2.22% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1953 bought what
$0.69 buys in 1970: the 1953 dollar
lost 31.2% of its purchasing power over
these 17 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 1970 at the same ratio, 1.45: $1,000 becomes
$1,453, and $10,000 becomes $14,532.
Amount in 1953
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.45
$5.00
$7.27
$10.00
$14.53
$20.00
$29.06
$50.00
$72.66
$100
$145
$500
$727
$1,000
$1,453
$5,000
$7,266
$10,000
$14,532
$100,000
$145,318
$1,000,000
$1,453,184
Inflation by spending category, 1953–1970
Between 1953 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 96.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 37.4%, against 45.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1953
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1953 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.22%
$145
Medical care
4.05%
$197
Transportation
2.06%
$142
Food
1.94%
$139
Apparel
1.88%
$137
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 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.48% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1953–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1953, at end
1953–1960
1.48%
10.9%
$111
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$145
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1953
$100 from 1953 had already become $112 by
1961, on its way to $145 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 1953 had the buying
power of $145; 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 1953 to 1970: $100 is worth $145 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1953 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1953-to-1970/