$100 in 1967 is worth $811 in 2021,
because prices increased 711.3% over that period, an average of
3.95% a year.
$100 in 1967 has
the same buying power as
$811
in 2021
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
711.3%
Average inflation rate
3.95% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$811
Price difference ($100 base)
$711
CPI in 1967
33.4
CPI in 2021
270.97
Inflation in 1967
3.09%
Inflation in 2021
4.70%
$100 in 1967 → 2021
$811
$100 in 2021 → 1967
$12.33
What happened to prices between 1967 and 2021
Between 1967 and 2021, the Consumer Price Index went from 33.4 to 270.97.
Cumulatively, prices increased 711.3%, which works out to an average of
3.95% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1967 bought what
$0.12 buys in 2021: the 1967 dollar
lost 87.7% of its purchasing power over
these 54 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 2021 at the same ratio, 8.11: $1,000 becomes
$8,113, and $10,000 becomes $81,129.
Amount in 1967
Value in 2021
$1.00
$8.11
$5.00
$40.56
$10.00
$81.13
$20.00
$162
$50.00
$406
$100
$811
$500
$4,056
$1,000
$8,113
$5,000
$40,564
$10,000
$81,129
$100,000
$811,287
$1,000,000
$8,112,874
Inflation by spending category, 1967–2021
Between 1967 and 2021, medical care rose the most, up 1762.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 137.2%, against 711.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1967
spending costs in 2021, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1967 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.95%
$811
Medical care
5.57%
$1,863
Energy
4.36%
$1,001
Housing
4.18%
$911
Food
3.96%
$815
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.92%
$799
Transportation
3.65%
$693
Apparel
1.61%
$237
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1967: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1967 to 2021
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2010s (1.73% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1967–2021 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$653
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$775
2020–2021
4.70%
4.7%
$811
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1967
$100 from 1967 had already become $433 by
1993, on its way to $811 in 2021; 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 prices fell 0.4% in 2009, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2021
In 2021, prices rose 4.7% and $100 from 1967 had the buying
power of $811; the year's average CPI of 270.97 is the level
behind every 2021 figure on this page.
2021 was the year inflation stopped being background noise. Consumer prices
rose 4.7% on average for the year, and the pace kept building as the months
went on: by December, the 12-month rate had reached 7.0%, the highest since
1982. The proximate cause was a supply chain that could not keep up with a
fast-reopening economy. A global semiconductor shortage choked new car
production and pushed used vehicle prices up by more than a third, the
single largest line item in the year’s inflation math. Lumber, appliances,
and shipping capacity told versions of the same story: demand snapped back
faster than factories, ports, and truckers could handle it. Washington added
fuel in March with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, on top of the
relief already in the pipeline since 2020. For most of the year, the Federal
Reserve called the price surge “transitory,” a temporary reopening effect
expected to fade on its own, and held its policy rate near zero. By
November, with inflation still climbing, the Fed reversed course and began
winding down its bond purchases, the first step toward the rate hikes that
would follow in 2022. Gas averaged $3.01 a gallon for the year, up from
about $2.17 in 2020, while the federal minimum wage held at $7.25,
unchanged since 2009. In hindsight, 2021 reads as the hinge year: the point
where “transitory” inflation became the multi-year fight the Fed spent the
next two years trying to win.
MLA: “Inflation from 1967 to 2021: $100 is worth $811 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-2021/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1967 to 2021. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1967-to-2021/