$100 in 1967 is worth $121 in 1971,
because prices increased 21.3% over that period, an average of
4.94% a year.
$100 in 1967 has
the same buying power as
$121
in 1971
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
21.3%
Average inflation rate
4.94% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$121
Price difference ($100 base)
$21.26
CPI in 1967
33.4
CPI in 1971
40.5
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
Inflation in 1971
4.38%
$100 in 1967 → 1971
$121
$100 in 1971 → 1967
$82.47
What happened to prices between 1967 and 1971
Between 1967 and 1971, the Consumer Price Index went from 33.4 to 40.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 21.3%, which works out to an average of
4.94% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1967 bought what
$0.82 buys in 1971: the 1967 dollar
lost 17.5% of its purchasing power over
these 4 years.
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.
Every 1967 amount converts to 1971 at the same ratio, 1.21: $1,000 becomes
$1,213, and $10,000 becomes $12,126.
Amount in 1967
Value in 1971
$1.00
$1.21
$5.00
$6.06
$10.00
$12.13
$20.00
$24.25
$50.00
$60.63
$100
$121
$500
$606
$1,000
$1,213
$5,000
$6,063
$10,000
$12,126
$100,000
$121,257
$1,000,000
$1,212,575
Inflation by spending category, 1967–1971
Between 1967 and 1971, medical care rose the most, up 28.0%, while energy rose the least, up 11.3%, against 21.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1967
spending costs in 1971, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1967 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.94%
$121
Medical care
6.37%
$128
Housing
5.39%
$123
Core (all items less food & energy)
5.32%
$123
Apparel
4.62%
$120
Transportation
4.36%
$119
Food
4.33%
$118
Energy
2.72%
$111
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1967: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1967 to 1971
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 5.12% a year, and slowest in the 1970s (4.38% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1967–1971 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1967, at end
1967–1970
5.12%
16.2%
$116
1970–1971
4.38%
4.4%
$121
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1967
$100 from 1967 had already become $110 by
1969, on its way to $121 in 1971; 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 4.2% in 1968.
In 1971, prices rose 4.4% and $100 from 1967 had the buying
power of $121; the year's average CPI of 40.5 is the level
behind every 1971 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 4.4% in 1971, down from 1970’s 5.7% as
the recession that started in December 1969 finally cooled demand. The bigger
economic story came that August 15, when President Nixon closed the “gold
window” that let foreign governments exchange dollars for gold, ending the
Bretton Woods system that had anchored the dollar since World War II. The
same address announced a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, the first
peacetime controls the country had seen, an attempt to break inflationary
expectations without the slower grind of tighter money. The “Nixon Shock,” as
it came to be known, let the dollar float against other currencies for the
first time and set the stage for a wage-and-price-control regime that would
run in various forms into 1973. Politically, the country lowered its voting
age that year: the 26th Amendment, ratified July 1, extended the vote to
18-year-olds, capping a campaign built on the argument that men old enough to
be drafted to Vietnam were old enough to vote for the people who sent them.
The Postal Service, independent since 1970’s reorganization, raised
first-class postage from 6 to 8 cents that May. A median household earned
$9,028 in 1971, up from $8,734 the year before, while gas held near 36 cents
a gallon and a new home sold for a median $25,200. Consumer prices stood
309.1% above their 1913 level by year’s end, still years away
from the double-digit inflation the controls were meant to prevent.
MLA: “Inflation from 1967 to 1971: $100 is worth $121 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-1971/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1967 to 1971. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-1971/