$100 in 1964 is worth $125 in 1970,
because prices increased 25.2% over that period, an average of
3.81% a year.
$100 in 1964 has
the same buying power as
$125
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
25.2%
Average inflation rate
3.81% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$125
Price difference ($100 base)
$25.16
CPI in 1964
31
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1964
1.31%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1964 → 1970
$125
$100 in 1970 → 1964
$79.90
What happened to prices between 1964 and 1970
Between 1964 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 31 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 25.2%, which works out to an average of
3.81% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1964 bought what
$0.80 buys in 1970: the 1964 dollar
lost 20.1% of its purchasing power over
these 6 years.
Consumer prices rose 1.3% in 1964, matching 1963’s pace
even as a large federal tax cut took effect that year. The Revenue Act of
1964, signed February 26, lowered individual and corporate tax rates
significantly, the cut Kennedy had proposed the year before his death and
Johnson pushed through Congress as a Keynesian bet that lower taxes would
spur enough growth without stoking prices. Congress reshaped civil rights
law that July 2, when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination
based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in employment
and public accommodations, the most sweeping civil rights legislation
since Reconstruction. Vietnam policy shifted that August, when Congress
passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution after reported attacks on U.S. Navy
destroyers, authorizing Johnson to use military force in Vietnam without
a formal declaration of war. American pop culture changed that February
too: the Beatles landed at New York’s Kennedy Airport and played the Ed
Sullivan Show two days later for an estimated 73 million viewers,
igniting the “British Invasion.” Consumer prices finished 1964 213.1%
above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at 5
cents, and the minimum wage stayed at $1.25 an hour.
Every 1964 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.25: $1,000 becomes
$1,252, and $10,000 becomes $12,516.
Amount in 1964
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.25
$5.00
$6.26
$10.00
$12.52
$20.00
$25.03
$50.00
$62.58
$100
$125
$500
$626
$1,000
$1,252
$5,000
$6,258
$10,000
$12,516
$100,000
$125,161
$1,000,000
$1,251,613
Inflation by spending category, 1964–1970
Between 1964 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 38.2%, while energy rose the least, up 13.3%, against 25.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1964
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1964 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.81%
$125
Medical care
5.54%
$138
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.97%
$126
Apparel
3.81%
$125
Food
3.71%
$124
Transportation
3.00%
$119
Energy
2.11%
$113
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1964: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1964
$100 from 1964 had already become $108 by
1967, on its way to $125 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 1.6% in 1965.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1964 had the buying
power of $125; 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 1964 to 1970: $100 is worth $125 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1964-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1964 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1964-to-1970/