$100 in 1956 is worth $143 in 1970,
because prices increased 42.6% over that period, an average of
2.57% a year.
$100 in 1956 has
the same buying power as
$143
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
42.6%
Average inflation rate
2.57% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$143
Price difference ($100 base)
$42.65
CPI in 1956
27.2
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1956
1.49%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1956 → 1970
$143
$100 in 1970 → 1956
$70.10
What happened to prices between 1956 and 1970
Between 1956 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 27.2 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 42.6%, which works out to an average of
2.57% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1956 bought what
$0.70 buys in 1970: the 1956 dollar
lost 29.9% of its purchasing power over
these 14 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1956, a return to mild inflation after they had
fallen 0.4% in 1955, the only annual decline of the decade. The two years sat
in the calmest stretch of the postwar index, a lull between the Korean War
price surge earlier in the 1950s and the acceleration that would return in
the 1970s. Congress had already raised the wage floor into that calm: the
Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1955, signed the previous August, took
effect March 1 and lifted the federal minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an
hour, the first increase since 1950. Eisenhower signed a longer-lasting
commitment on June 29, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, funding 41,000 miles of
controlled-access highway at 90% federal cost to build the Interstate
System, the largest public-works program the country had undertaken. He won
a second term that November, carrying 41 states and about 57% of the
popular vote in a rematch against Adlai Stevenson. Abroad, the Suez Crisis
broke the calm on the supply side: Egypt nationalized the canal on July 26,
and after Israel invaded the Sinai on October 29 with British and French
forces following, the canal’s closure and damaged pipelines squeezed oil
shipments to Western Europe for months. Consumer prices stood 174.7% above
their 1913 level by 1956, up 94% since 1940
alone, even after a decade that had barely moved the index. First-class
postage held at 3 cents, unchanged since 1932.
Every 1956 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.43: $1,000 becomes
$1,426, and $10,000 becomes $14,265.
Amount in 1956
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.43
$5.00
$7.13
$10.00
$14.26
$20.00
$28.53
$50.00
$71.32
$100
$143
$500
$713
$1,000
$1,426
$5,000
$7,132
$10,000
$14,265
$100,000
$142,647
$1,000,000
$1,426,471
Inflation by spending category, 1956–1970
Between 1956 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 79.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 35.5%, against 42.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1956
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1956 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.57%
$143
Medical care
4.28%
$180
Transportation
2.59%
$143
Food
2.43%
$140
Apparel
2.19%
$135
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1956: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1956 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (2.14% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1956–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1956, at end
1956–1960
2.14%
8.8%
$109
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$143
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1956
$100 from 1956 had already become $113 by
1963, on its way to $143 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 1956 had the buying
power of $143; 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 1956 to 1970: $100 is worth $143 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1956-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1956 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1956-to-1970/