$100 in 1955 is worth $125 in 1967,
because prices increased 24.6% over that period, an average of
1.85% a year.
$100 in 1955 has
the same buying power as
$125
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
24.6%
Average inflation rate
1.85% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$125
Price difference ($100 base)
$24.63
CPI in 1955
26.8
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1955 → 1967
$125
$100 in 1967 → 1955
$80.24
What happened to prices between 1955 and 1967
Between 1955 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.8 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 24.6%, which works out to an average of
1.85% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1955 bought what
$0.80 buys in 1967: the 1955 dollar
lost 19.8% of its purchasing power over
these 12 years.
Consumer prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the first annual decline since 1949,
as a strong rebound from the 1953-54 recession delivered growth without
much price pressure; automakers and appliance makers competed hard on
price for a booming consumer market. Organized labor consolidated that
December, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations merged on the 5th under President George Meany,
uniting roughly 15 million workers in the AFL-CIO after two decades as
rival federations. That same day, a different kind of organizing began in
Montgomery, Alabama: four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing
to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, the city’s Black community
began a boycott of its buses that would last more than a year and help
launch the civil rights movement’s mass phase. Markets got a scare that
September: news of Eisenhower’s heart attack on the 24th sent the Dow
Jones Industrial Average to its steepest one-day drop since the 1929
crash when trading resumed that Monday, before stocks recovered as the
president’s health improved. Consumer prices finished 1955 170.7% above
their 1913 level, essentially unchanged from where they
stood a year earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
Every 1955 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.25: $1,000 becomes
$1,246, and $10,000 becomes $12,463.
Amount in 1955
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.25
$5.00
$6.23
$10.00
$12.46
$20.00
$24.93
$50.00
$62.31
$100
$125
$500
$623
$1,000
$1,246
$5,000
$6,231
$10,000
$12,463
$100,000
$124,627
$1,000,000
$1,246,269
Inflation by spending category, 1955–1967
Between 1955 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 54.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 18.9%, against 24.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1955
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1955 →
All items (CPI-U)
1.85%
$125
Medical care
3.72%
$155
Transportation
2.15%
$129
Food
1.72%
$123
Apparel
1.45%
$119
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1955: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1955 to 1967
Prices climbed fastest in the 1950s, averaging 2.01% a year, and slowest in the 1960s (1.74% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1955–1967 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1955, at end
1955–1960
2.01%
10.4%
$110
1960–1967
1.74%
12.8%
$125
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1955
$100 from 1955 had already become $112 by
1961, 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 the smallest rise was 0.7% in 1959.
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1955 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 1955 to 1967: $100 is worth $125 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1955 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1967/