$100 in 1966 is worth $120 in 1970,
because prices increased 19.8% over that period, an average of
4.61% a year.
$100 in 1966 has
the same buying power as
$120
in 1970
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
19.8%
Average inflation rate
4.61% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$120
Price difference ($100 base)
$19.75
CPI in 1966
32.4
CPI in 1970
38.8
Inflation in 1966
2.86%
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
$100 in 1966 → 1970
$120
$100 in 1970 → 1966
$83.51
What happened to prices between 1966 and 1970
Between 1966 and 1970, the Consumer Price Index went from 32.4 to 38.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 19.8%, which works out to an average of
4.61% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1966 bought what
$0.84 buys in 1970: the 1966 dollar
lost 16.5% of its purchasing power over
these 4 years.
Consumer prices rose 2.9% in 1966, nearly double 1965’s
1.6% as Vietnam War spending kept climbing without an offsetting tax
increase, pushing the economy closer to capacity and prices higher along
with it. Medicare coverage took effect that July 1, extending federal
health insurance to roughly 19 million Americans age 65 and older under
the program signed into law the year before. The Federal Reserve had
already moved to cool the overheating economy, raising its discount rate
the previous December over White House objections; the tightening carried
into 1966 as the first postwar credit crunch, freezing parts of the
housing and municipal bond markets even as inflation kept climbing. Congress widened
the wage floor’s reach that September 23, when the Fair Labor Standards
Amendments of 1966 set a $1.40 minimum wage effective the following
February and extended coverage to roughly 9 million more workers in
retail, hospitals, schools, and other services not previously covered.
Consumer prices finished 1966 227.3% above their 1913
level. First-class postage held at 5 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at
$1.25 an hour for the rest of the year.
Every 1966 amount converts to 1970 at the same ratio, 1.20: $1,000 becomes
$1,198, and $10,000 becomes $11,975.
Amount in 1966
Value in 1970
$1.00
$1.20
$5.00
$5.99
$10.00
$11.98
$20.00
$23.95
$50.00
$59.88
$100
$120
$500
$599
$1,000
$1,198
$5,000
$5,988
$10,000
$11,975
$100,000
$119,753
$1,000,000
$1,197,531
Inflation by spending category, 1966–1970
Between 1966 and 1970, medical care rose the most, up 29.3%, while energy rose the least, up 9.4%, against 19.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1966
spending costs in 1970, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1966 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.61%
$120
Medical care
6.63%
$129
Core (all items less food & energy)
5.05%
$122
Apparel
4.84%
$121
Transportation
3.80%
$116
Food
3.77%
$116
Energy
2.28%
$109
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1966: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1966
$100 from 1966 had already become $107 by
1968, on its way to $120 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 3.1% in 1967.
In 1970, prices rose 5.7% and $100 from 1966 had the buying
power of $120; 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 1966 to 1970: $100 is worth $120 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1966-to-1970/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1966 to 1970. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1966-to-1970/