$100 in 1962 is worth $111 in 1967,
because prices increased 10.6% over that period, an average of
2.03% a year.
$100 in 1962 has
the same buying power as
$111
in 1967
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
10.6%
Average inflation rate
2.03% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$111
Price difference ($100 base)
$10.60
CPI in 1962
30.2
CPI in 1967
33.4
Inflation in 1962
1.00%
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
$100 in 1962 → 1967
$111
$100 in 1967 → 1962
$90.42
What happened to prices between 1962 and 1967
Between 1962 and 1967, the Consumer Price Index went from 30.2 to 33.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 10.6%, which works out to an average of
2.03% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1962 bought what
$0.90 buys in 1967: the 1962 dollar
lost 9.6% of its purchasing power over
these 5 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.0% in 1962, matching 1961’s pace as
inflation stayed remarkably low and unemployment slowly declined from its
recession-era highs. That January, Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers
introduced “wage-price guideposts,” non-binding targets meant to keep pay
and price increases in line with productivity growth without formal
controls. The space race delivered a milestone that February, when John
Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times, making him the
first American to orbit the planet. Markets got a scare that spring: a
dispute over U.S. Steel’s April price increase, which Kennedy publicly
pressured the company into rolling back, rattled investors, and the Dow
Jones Industrial Average fell about 5.7% on May 28, its steepest one-day
drop since the 1929 crash. The year’s gravest moment came that October,
when American reconnaissance photographed Soviet nuclear missiles in
Cuba, setting off a 13-day standoff that brought the two superpowers
closer to nuclear war than at any other point in the Cold War before the
Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge
not to invade the island. Consumer prices finished 1962 205.1% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.15 an hour.
Every 1962 amount converts to 1967 at the same ratio, 1.11: $1,000 becomes
$1,106, and $10,000 becomes $11,060.
Amount in 1962
Value in 1967
$1.00
$1.11
$5.00
$5.53
$10.00
$11.06
$20.00
$22.12
$50.00
$55.30
$100
$111
$500
$553
$1,000
$1,106
$5,000
$5,530
$10,000
$11,060
$100,000
$110,596
$1,000,000
$1,105,960
Inflation by spending category, 1962–1967
Between 1962 and 1967, medical care rose the most, up 20.0%, while energy rose the least, up 5.3%, against 10.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1962
spending costs in 1967, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1962 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.03%
$111
Medical care
3.71%
$120
Food
2.19%
$111
Core (all items less food & energy)
2.02%
$111
Apparel
1.95%
$110
Transportation
1.57%
$108
Energy
1.04%
$105
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1962: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1962
$100 from 1962 had already become $103 by
1964, on its way to $111 in 1967; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.1% in 1967, and the smallest rise was 1.3% in 1964.
In 1967, prices rose 3.1% and $100 from 1962 had the buying
power of $111; the year's average CPI of 33.4 is the level
behind every 1967 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 3.1% in 1967, up from 1966’s 2.9% as
Vietnam War spending kept climbing alongside expanding Great Society
programs, a combination of rising military and domestic outlays that
economists later blamed for entrenching inflation through the rest of the
decade. The minimum wage rose that February 1, to $1.40 an hour, the
first step of a phased increase Congress had set the year before. Urban
unrest reached a peak that July, when days of rioting left 26 dead in
Newark and 43 dead in Detroit, the deadliest of that summer’s roughly 160
disturbances; Johnson responded by forming the Kerner Commission to study
the causes of the unrest. The Supreme Court gained its first Black
justice that year too: the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall on August
30, and he was sworn in that October after serving as U.S. Solicitor
General and, before that, as the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of
Education. Consumer prices finished 1967 237.4% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 5 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1962 to 1967: $100 is worth $111 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-1967/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1962 to 1967. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-1967/