$100 in 1957 is worth $138 in 1970,
because prices increased 38.1% over that period, an average of
2.51% a year.
$100 in 1957 has
the same buying power as
$138
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
38.1%
Average inflation rate
2.51% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$138
Price difference ($100 base)
$38.08
CPI in 1957
28.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1957
3.31%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1957 → 1970
$138
$100 in 1970 → 1957
$72.42
What happened to prices between 1957 and 1970
Between 1957 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 28.1 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 38.1%, which works out to an average of
2.51% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1957 bought what
$0.72 buys in 1970: the 1957 dollar
lost 27.6% of its purchasing power over
these 13 years.
Consumer prices rose 3.3% in 1957, up from 1956’s 1.5% and
the sharpest increase since the Korean War price surge of 1951. The jump
fed a growing debate among economists over “cost-push” inflation, prices
climbing from rising wages and material costs rather than excess demand,
a debate that would recur for the next quarter century. The Federal
Reserve tightened policy to fight it, and by August the tighter money
combined with falling business investment to tip the economy into a
recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s
dating. The Cold War took a technological turn that October, when the
Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, on the
4th, stunning the American public and setting off both the Space Race and
a surge in federal science and defense spending the following year. Civil
rights reached a crisis that September in Little Rock, Arkansas: after
Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block nine Black
students from Central High School, Eisenhower federalized the Guard and
sent the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the Supreme Court’s
desegregation order. Consumer prices finished 1957 183.8% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the
minimum wage stood at $1.00 an hour.
Every 1957 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.38: $1,000 becomes
$1,381, and $10,000 becomes $13,808.
Amount in 1957
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.38
$5.00
$6.90
$10.00
$13.81
$20.00
$27.62
$50.00
$69.04
$100
$138
$500
$690
$1,000
$1,381
$5,000
$6,904
$10,000
$13,808
$100,000
$138,078
$1,000,000
$1,380,783
Inflation by spending category, 1957–1970
Between 1957 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 72.6%, while energy rose the least, up 18.6%, against 38.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1957
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1957 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.51%
$138
Medical care
4.29%
$173
Core (all items less food & energy)
2.69%
$141
Food
2.37%
$136
Transportation
2.36%
$135
Apparel
2.22%
$133
Energy
1.32%
$119
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1957: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1957 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.75% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1957–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1957, at end
1957–1960
1.75%
5.3%
$105
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$138
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1957
$100 from 1957 had already become $109 by
1963, on its way to $138 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 1957 had the buying
power of $138; 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 1957 to 1970: $100 is worth $138 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1957 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-1970/