Value of $100 in 1966, adjusted to 1977

What happened to prices between 1966 and 1977

Between 1966 and 1977, the Consumer Price Index went from 32.4 to 60.6. Cumulatively, prices increased 87.0%, which works out to an average of 5.86% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1966 bought what $0.53 buys in 1977.

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.

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The destination year: 1977

Consumer prices rose 6.5% in 1977, ticking back up from 1976’s 5.8% as the economic recovery strengthened, wages climbed, and energy costs pushed higher again. The year opened with a warning about that energy dependence: record cold across the Midwest and Northeast in January and February strained natural gas supplies so badly that schools and factories in several states shut down for days to conserve fuel. Jimmy Carter, inaugurated that January, made energy policy a centerpiece of his presidency, and Congress created the cabinet-level Department of Energy that August to consolidate programs built up piecemeal since the 1973 oil embargo. Culture offered some relief from the anxiety: released that May, Star Wars became the highest-grossing film in history to that point, drawing lines around theater blocks for months. The year also closed an era in a different way. Elvis Presley was found dead at his Graceland home on August 16 at age 42, drawing tens of thousands of mourners to Memphis. A median household earned $13,572 in 1977, a new home sold for a median $48,800, and gas averaged 62 cents a gallon. Consumer prices stood 512.1% above their 1913 level, with the energy anxieties of the year setting up the harder shocks of 1978 and 1979.

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