$100 in 1962 is worth $128 in 1970,
because prices increased 28.5% over that period, an average of
3.18% a year.
$100 in 1962 has
the same buying power as
$128
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
28.5%
Average inflation rate
3.18% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$128
Price difference ($100 base)
$28.48
CPI in 1962
30.2
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1962
1.00%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1962 → 1970
$128
$100 in 1970 → 1962
$77.84
What happened to prices between 1962 and 1970
Between 1962 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 30.2 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 28.5%, which works out to an average of
3.18% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1962 bought what
$0.78 buys in 1970: the 1962 dollar
lost 22.2% of its purchasing power over
these 8 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 1970 at the same ratio, 1.28: $1,000 becomes
$1,285, and $10,000 becomes $12,848.
Amount in 1962
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.28
$5.00
$6.42
$10.00
$12.85
$20.00
$25.70
$50.00
$64.24
$100
$128
$500
$642
$1,000
$1,285
$5,000
$6,424
$10,000
$12,848
$100,000
$128,477
$1,000,000
$1,284,768
Inflation by spending category, 1962–1970
Between 1962 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 44.7%, while energy rose the least, up 12.8%, against 28.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1962
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1962 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.18%
$128
Medical care
4.73%
$145
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.33%
$130
Food
3.14%
$128
Apparel
3.12%
$128
Transportation
2.49%
$122
Energy
1.52%
$113
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 $107 by
1966, on its way to $128 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 1.3% in 1964.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1962 had the buying
power of $128; 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 1962 to 1970: $100 is worth $128 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1962 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-1970/