$100 in 1955 is worth $145 in 1970,
because prices increased 44.8% over that period, an average of
2.50% a year.
$100 in 1955 has
the same buying power as
$145
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
44.8%
Average inflation rate
2.50% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$145
Price difference ($100 base)
$44.78
CPI in 1955
26.8
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1955
-0.37%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1955 → 1970
$145
$100 in 1970 → 1955
$69.07
What happened to prices between 1955 and 1970
Between 1955 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 26.8 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 44.8%, which works out to an average of
2.50% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1955 bought what
$0.69 buys in 1970: the 1955 dollar
lost 30.9% of its purchasing power over
these 15 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 1970 at the same ratio, 1.45: $1,000 becomes
$1,448, and $10,000 becomes $14,478.
Amount in 1955
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.45
$5.00
$7.24
$10.00
$14.48
$20.00
$28.96
$50.00
$72.39
$100
$145
$500
$724
$1,000
$1,448
$5,000
$7,239
$10,000
$14,478
$100,000
$144,776
$1,000,000
$1,447,761
Inflation by spending category, 1955–1970
Between 1955 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 86.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 38.0%, against 44.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1955
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1955 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.50%
$145
Medical care
4.25%
$187
Transportation
2.52%
$145
Food
2.32%
$141
Apparel
2.17%
$138
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 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.01% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1955–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1955, at end
1955–1960
2.01%
10.4%
$110
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$145
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1955
$100 from 1955 had already become $113 by
1962, 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 the smallest rise was 0.7% in 1959.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1955 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 1955 to 1970: $100 is worth $145 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1955 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1955-to-1970/