Between 1957 and 1990, the Consumer Price Index went from 28.1 to 130.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 365.1%, which works out to an average of
4.77% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1957 bought what
$0.21 buys in 1990.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1957 spending costs in 1990, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1957 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.77%
$465
Medical care
6.61%
$826
Energy
4.83%
$475
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.79%
$469
Food
4.72%
$458
Transportation
4.56%
$435
Apparel
3.16%
$279
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1957: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1990
In 1990, the median U.S. household earned about $29,900, gas averaged $1.15 a
gallon, and mailing a letter cost a quarter. Inflation ran hot at 5.4% for the
year, its highest rate since 1982, pushed up by an oil shock after Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, and the economy tipped into recession that summer. It was
the last gasp of elevated inflation before the long calm of the 1990s.
MLA: “Inflation from 1957 to 1990: $100 is worth $465 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-1990/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1957 to 1990. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-1990/