$100 in 1960 is worth $760 in 2011,
because prices increased 659.9% over that period, an average of
4.06% a year.
$100 in 1960 has
the same buying power as
$760
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
659.9%
Average inflation rate
4.06% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$760
Price difference ($100 base)
$660
CPI in 1960
29.6
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1960 → 2011
$760
$100 in 2011 → 1960
$13.16
What happened to prices between 1960 and 2011
Between 1960 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 29.6 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 659.9%, which works out to an average of
4.06% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1960 bought what
$0.13 buys in 2011: the 1960 dollar
lost 86.8% of its purchasing power over
these 51 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.7% in 1960, up from 1959’s 0.7% even
as the economy slipped into recession that April, a downturn that would
prove the shortest since World War II. The year’s defining political
moment came that November, when John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard
Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history,
decided by roughly two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote.
Television played a new role in the race: the first-ever televised
presidential debate that September, watched by an estimated 70 million
people, was widely seen as favoring the telegenic Kennedy. Civil rights
protest took a new form that February, when four Black freshmen at North
Carolina A&T State University sat down at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch
counter in Greensboro and refused to leave; the sit-in tactic spread to
dozens of Southern cities within weeks. Cold War tensions flared that May,
when a Soviet missile downed an American U-2 spy plane deep inside Soviet
airspace. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive, embarrassing
the Eisenhower administration and collapsing a Paris summit called to ease
relations with Moscow. Consumer prices finished 1960 199.0% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.00 an hour.
Every 1960 amount converts to 2011 at the same ratio, 7.60: $1,000 becomes
$7,599, and $10,000 becomes $75,993.
Amount in 1960
Value in 2011
$1.00
$7.60
$5.00
$38.00
$10.00
$75.99
$20.00
$152
$50.00
$380
$100
$760
$500
$3,800
$1,000
$7,599
$5,000
$37,996
$10,000
$75,993
$100,000
$759,929
$1,000,000
$7,599,291
Inflation by spending category, 1960–2011
Between 1960 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 1694.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 167.2%, against 659.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1960
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1960 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.06%
$760
Medical care
5.83%
$1,795
Energy
4.79%
$1,089
Food
4.06%
$759
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.99%
$735
Transportation
3.93%
$713
Apparel
1.95%
$267
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1960: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1960 to 2011
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1960–2011 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1960, at end
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$131
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$278
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$442
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$582
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$737
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$760
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1960
$100 from 1960 had already become $370 by
1986, on its way to $760 in 2011; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and prices fell 0.4% in 2009, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1960 had the buying
power of $760; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1960 to 2011: $100 is worth $760 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1960-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1960 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1960-to-2011/