$100 in 1967 is worth $125 in 1972,
because prices increased 25.1% over that period, an average of
4.59% a year.
$100 in 1967 has
the same buying power as
$125
in 1972
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
25.1%
Average inflation rate
4.59% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$125
Price difference ($100 base)
$25.15
CPI in 1967
33.4
CPI in 1972
41.8
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
Inflation in 1972
3.21%
$100 in 1967 → 1972
$125
$100 in 1972 → 1967
$79.90
What happened to prices between 1967 and 1972
Between 1967 and 1972, the Consumer Price Index went from 33.4 to 41.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 25.1%, which works out to an average of
4.59% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1967 bought what
$0.80 buys in 1972: the 1967 dollar
lost 20.1% of its purchasing power over
these 5 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 1972 at the same ratio, 1.25: $1,000 becomes
$1,251, and $10,000 becomes $12,515.
Amount in 1967
Value in 1972
$1.00
$1.25
$5.00
$6.26
$10.00
$12.51
$20.00
$25.03
$50.00
$62.57
$100
$125
$500
$626
$1,000
$1,251
$5,000
$6,257
$10,000
$12,515
$100,000
$125,150
$1,000,000
$1,251,497
Inflation by spending category, 1967–1972
Between 1967 and 1972, medical care rose the most, up 32.3%, while energy rose the least, up 14.3%, against 25.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1967
spending costs in 1972, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1967 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.59%
$125
Medical care
5.75%
$132
Housing
5.05%
$128
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.86%
$127
Food
4.31%
$123
Apparel
4.08%
$122
Transportation
3.68%
$120
Energy
2.71%
$114
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1967: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1967 to 1972
Prices climbed fastest in the 1960s, averaging 5.12% a year, and slowest in the 1970s (3.79% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1967–1972 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1967, at end
1967–1970
5.12%
16.2%
$116
1970–1972
3.79%
7.7%
$125
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1967
$100 from 1967 had already become $110 by
1969, on its way to $125 in 1972; 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 3.2% in 1972.
In 1972, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1967 had the buying
power of $125; the year's average CPI of 41.8 is the level
behind every 1972 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose just 3.2% in 1972, the calmest year of the decade and a
sharp break from the previous two years. The relief was largely engineered:
Nixon’s wage and price controls, imposed as a 90-day freeze in August 1971,
had settled into a series of “phases” that capped how much businesses could
raise prices through the election year. Economists would later argue the
controls mostly deferred inflation rather than curing it, storing up pressure
that broke loose once they were lifted. Nixon spent political capital on
foreign policy that year, traveling to Beijing that February in the first
visit by a sitting U.S. president to the People’s Republic of China, a trip
that began normalizing relations Washington had frozen since 1949. Closer to
home, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National
Committee’s offices at the Watergate complex that June 17, an event that drew
little attention at the time but would eventually force Nixon from office.
None of it dented his re-election bid: Nixon carried 49 states against
Democrat George McGovern that November, helped by an economy that, on paper,
looked more stable than it had in years. A median household earned $9,697 in
1972, a new home sold for a median $27,600, and gas held near 36 cents a
gallon for a third straight year. Consumer prices stood 322.2% above their
1913 level, a lull that would not survive contact with the
controls’ expiration and the oil shock still to come.
MLA: “Inflation from 1967 to 1972: $100 is worth $125 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-1972/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1967 to 1972. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-1972/