$100 in 1968 is worth $543 in 2004,
because prices increased 442.8% over that period, an average of
4.81% a year.
$100 in 1968 has
the same buying power as
$543
in 2004
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
442.8%
Average inflation rate
4.81% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$543
Price difference ($100 base)
$443
CPI in 1968
34.8
CPI in 2004
188.9
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
Inflation in 2004
2.66%
$100 in 1968 → 2004
$543
$100 in 2004 → 1968
$18.42
What happened to prices between 1968 and 2004
Between 1968 and 2004, the Consumer Price Index went from 34.8 to 188.9.
Cumulatively, prices increased 442.8%, which works out to an average of
4.81% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1968 bought what
$0.18 buys in 2004: the 1968 dollar
lost 81.6% of its purchasing power over
these 36 years.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in 1968, up sharply from 1967’s
3.1% and the fastest pace in 17 years, as Vietnam War spending and a tight
labor market pushed inflation higher despite the Federal Reserve’s
earlier tightening. The year was marked by political violence: Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis on April
4, touching off rioting in more than 100 cities, and Robert F. Kennedy was
shot in Los Angeles on June 5, moments after winning California’s
Democratic presidential primary, and died the next day. Washington tried
to answer the inflation problem directly that June 28, when Congress
passed a 10% income tax surcharge, the Revenue and Expenditure Control
Act, temporarily raising taxes and cutting spending to cool an economy
overheated by war and Great Society outlays; prices kept accelerating
anyway. The cost of living rose in smaller, more visible ways too:
first-class postage climbed to 6 cents that January 7, and the minimum
wage rose to $1.60 an hour that February 1, the final step of the
increase Congress had set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1968 251.5% above their 1913 level.
Every 1968 amount converts to 2004 at the same ratio, 5.43: $1,000 becomes
$5,428, and $10,000 becomes $54,282.
Amount in 1968
Value in 2004
$1.00
$5.43
$5.00
$27.14
$10.00
$54.28
$20.00
$109
$50.00
$271
$100
$543
$500
$2,714
$1,000
$5,428
$5,000
$27,141
$10,000
$54,282
$100,000
$542,816
$1,000,000
$5,428,161
Inflation by spending category, 1968–2004
Between 1968 and 2004, medical care rose the most, up 937.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 124.2%, against 442.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1968
spending costs in 2004, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1968 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.81%
$543
Medical care
6.71%
$1,037
Energy
5.23%
$626
Housing
5.06%
$592
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.80%
$542
Food
4.73%
$527
Transportation
4.43%
$476
Apparel
2.27%
$224
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1968: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1968 to 2004
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.34% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1968–2004 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1968, at end
1968–1970
5.59%
11.5%
$111
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$237
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$376
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$495
2000–2004
2.34%
9.7%
$543
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1968
$100 from 1968 had already become $315 by
1986, on its way to $543 in 2004; 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: 2004
In 2004, prices rose 2.7% and $100 from 1968 had the buying
power of $543; the year's average CPI of 188.9 is the level
behind every 2004 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in 2004, with a 29-cent jump in the price of gasoline, to $1.88 a
gallon, doing much of the work. Crude oil passed $50 a barrel in October on rising demand
from China and India. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in four years on
June 30, to 1.25%, and it kept going: 17 consecutive quarter-point increases took the rate to
5.25% by June 2006. Housing was already running ahead of incomes. The median household earned
about $44,300, up 2.3% from 2003, while the median new home sold for $221,000, up about 13%. A
first-class stamp stayed at 37 cents and the federal minimum wage at $5.15, unchanged since
1997.
MLA: “Inflation from 1968 to 2004: $100 is worth $543 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2004/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1968 to 2004. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2004/