$100 in 1959 is worth $133 in 1970,
because prices increased 33.3% over that period, an average of
2.65% a year.
$100 in 1959 has
the same buying power as
$133
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
33.3%
Average inflation rate
2.65% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$133
Price difference ($100 base)
$33.33
CPI in 1959
29.1
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1959
0.69%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1959 → 1970
$133
$100 in 1970 → 1959
$75.00
What happened to prices between 1959 and 1970
Between 1959 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 29.1 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 33.3%, which works out to an average of
2.65% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1959 bought what
$0.75 buys in 1970: the 1959 dollar
lost 25.0% of its purchasing power over
these 11 years.
Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1959, down sharply from 1958’s
2.8% as the economy recovered briskly from the year before’s recession,
with output and employment both rebounding through the year. The map of
the country changed that year for the first time since 1912: Alaska
joined the union January 3, and Hawaii followed August 21, completing the
50-state United States. Ninety miles from Florida, Cuba changed hands
that January, when Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces overthrew President
Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country on the 1st; Castro entered Havana
on the 8th, beginning a Communist government that would define Cold War
tensions in the hemisphere for decades. Labor and management fought their
longest battle of the postwar era that summer: the United Steelworkers
walked out July 15 in a dispute over work rules, the longest strike in the
industry’s history, before a federal court granted the Eisenhower
administration a Taft-Hartley back-to-work order that November. Consumer
prices finished the decade 193.9% above their 1913 level,
up 20.7% from where they stood in 1950. First-class
postage held at 4 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
Every 1959 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.33: $1,000 becomes
$1,333, and $10,000 becomes $13,333.
Amount in 1959
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.33
$5.00
$6.67
$10.00
$13.33
$20.00
$26.67
$50.00
$66.67
$100
$133
$500
$667
$1,000
$1,333
$5,000
$6,667
$10,000
$13,333
$100,000
$133,333
$1,000,000
$1,333,333
Inflation by spending category, 1959–1970
Between 1959 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 58.1%, while energy rose the least, up 16.4%, against 33.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1959
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1959 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.65%
$133
Medical care
4.25%
$158
Core (all items less food & energy)
2.77%
$135
Food
2.56%
$132
Apparel
2.52%
$132
Transportation
2.11%
$126
Energy
1.39%
$116
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1959: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1959 to 1970
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 2.74% a year, and slowest in the 1950s (1.72% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1959–1970 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1959, at end
1959–1960
1.72%
1.7%
$102
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$133
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1959
$100 from 1959 had already become $107 by
1964, on its way to $133 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 1.0% in 1962.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1959 had the buying
power of $133; 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 1959 to 1970: $100 is worth $133 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1959-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1959 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1959-to-1970/