$100 in 1967 is worth $551 in 2003,
because prices increased 450.9% over that period, an average of
4.85% a year.
$100 in 1967 has
the same buying power as
$551
in 2003
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
450.9%
Average inflation rate
4.85% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$551
Price difference ($100 base)
$451
CPI in 1967
33.4
CPI in 2003
184
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
Inflation in 2003
2.28%
$100 in 1967 → 2003
$551
$100 in 2003 → 1967
$18.15
What happened to prices between 1967 and 2003
Between 1967 and 2003, the Consumer Price Index went from 33.4 to 184.
Cumulatively, prices increased 450.9%, which works out to an average of
4.85% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1967 bought what
$0.18 buys in 2003: the 1967 dollar
lost 81.8% of its purchasing power over
these 36 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 2003 at the same ratio, 5.51: $1,000 becomes
$5,509, and $10,000 becomes $55,090.
Amount in 1967
Value in 2003
$1.00
$5.51
$5.00
$27.54
$10.00
$55.09
$20.00
$110
$50.00
$275
$100
$551
$500
$2,754
$1,000
$5,509
$5,000
$27,545
$10,000
$55,090
$100,000
$550,898
$1,000,000
$5,508,982
Inflation by spending category, 1967–2003
Between 1967 and 2003, medical care rose the most, up 953.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 137.1%, against 450.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1967
spending costs in 2003, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1967 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.85%
$551
Medical care
6.76%
$1,054
Housing
5.10%
$600
Energy
4.97%
$574
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.88%
$557
Food
4.73%
$528
Transportation
4.41%
$473
Apparel
2.43%
$237
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1967: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1967 to 2003
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.23% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1967–2003 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1967, at end
1967–1970
5.12%
16.2%
$116
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$247
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$391
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$516
2000–2003
2.23%
6.9%
$551
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1967
$100 from 1967 had already become $322 by
1985, on its way to $551 in 2003; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and the smallest rise was 1.6% in 1998.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2003
In 2003, prices rose 2.3% and $100 from 1967 had the buying
power of $551; the year's average CPI of 184 is the level
behind every 2003 figure on this page.
Inflation was 2.3% in 2003, up from 1.6% in 2002, as gasoline climbed from $1.36 to $1.59 a
gallon around the March invasion of Iraq. Even so, the Federal Reserve spent the year worried
about prices being too low: on June 25 it cut its policy rate to 1.0%, the lowest since 1958,
and said the risk of deflation, though small, deserved a response. The median household earned
about $43,300 and a new home cost roughly $195,000. Congress passed a second round of tax cuts
in May, and the economy grew faster in the second half of the year than at any point since
1999. Hiring lagged the recovery, and unemployment peaked at 6.3% in June. A first-class stamp
stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15.
MLA: “Inflation from 1967 to 2003: $100 is worth $551 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-2003/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1967 to 2003. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-2003/