Between 1957 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 28.1 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 821.0%, which works out to an average of
3.59% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1957 bought what
$0.11 buys in 2020.
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 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1957 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.59%
$921
Medical care
5.33%
$2,634
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.60%
$926
Food
3.59%
$925
Energy
3.58%
$916
Transportation
3.20%
$727
Apparel
1.56%
$265
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1957: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2020
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1957 to 2020: $100 is worth $921 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1957 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1957-to-2020/