$100 in 1960 is worth $874 in 2020,
because prices increased 774.4% over that period, an average of
3.68% a year.
$100 in 1960 has
the same buying power as
$874
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
774.4%
Average inflation rate
3.68% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$874
Price difference ($100 base)
$774
CPI in 1960
29.6
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1960
1.72%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1960 → 2020
$874
$100 in 2020 → 1960
$11.44
What happened to prices between 1960 and 2020
Between 1960 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 29.6 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 774.4%, which works out to an average of
3.68% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1960 bought what
$0.11 buys in 2020: the 1960 dollar
lost 88.6% of its purchasing power over
these 60 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 2020 at the same ratio, 8.74: $1,000 becomes
$8,744, and $10,000 becomes $87,436.
Amount in 1960
Value in 2020
$1.00
$8.74
$5.00
$43.72
$10.00
$87.44
$20.00
$175
$50.00
$437
$100
$874
$500
$4,372
$1,000
$8,744
$5,000
$43,718
$10,000
$87,436
$100,000
$874,361
$1,000,000
$8,743,615
Inflation by spending category, 1960–2020
Between 1960 and 2020, medical care rose the most, up 2226.8%, while apparel rose the least, up 158.4%, against 774.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1960
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1960 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.68%
$874
Medical care
5.39%
$2,327
Food
3.71%
$891
Energy
3.69%
$879
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.68%
$875
Transportation
3.24%
$676
Apparel
1.59%
$258
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1960: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1960 to 2020
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2010s (1.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1960–2020 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
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$874
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1960
$100 from 1960 had already become $442 by
1990, on its way to $874 in 2020; 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: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1960 had the buying
power of $874; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
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 1960 to 2020: $100 is worth $874 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1960-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1960 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1960-to-2020/