$100 in 1968 is worth $579 in 2006,
because prices increased 479.3% over that period, an average of
4.73% a year.
$100 in 1968 has
the same buying power as
$579
in 2006
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
479.3%
Average inflation rate
4.73% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$579
Price difference ($100 base)
$479
CPI in 1968
34.8
CPI in 2006
201.6
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
Inflation in 2006
3.23%
$100 in 1968 → 2006
$579
$100 in 2006 → 1968
$17.26
What happened to prices between 1968 and 2006
Between 1968 and 2006, the Consumer Price Index went from 34.8 to 201.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 479.3%, which works out to an average of
4.73% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1968 bought what
$0.17 buys in 2006: the 1968 dollar
lost 82.7% of its purchasing power over
these 38 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 2006 at the same ratio, 5.79: $1,000 becomes
$5,793, and $10,000 becomes $57,931.
Amount in 1968
Value in 2006
$1.00
$5.79
$5.00
$28.97
$10.00
$57.93
$20.00
$116
$50.00
$290
$100
$579
$500
$2,897
$1,000
$5,793
$5,000
$28,966
$10,000
$57,931
$100,000
$579,310
$1,000,000
$5,793,103
Inflation by spending category, 1968–2006
Between 1968 and 2006, medical care rose the most, up 1024.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 122.5%, against 479.3% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1968
spending costs in 2006, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1968 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.73%
$579
Medical care
6.58%
$1,124
Energy
5.67%
$814
Housing
4.98%
$635
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.67%
$567
Food
4.60%
$553
Transportation
4.47%
$527
Apparel
2.13%
$223
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1968: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1968 to 2006
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.66% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1968–2006 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
2000–2006
2.66%
17.1%
$579
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1968
$100 from 1968 had already become $315 by
1986, on its way to $579 in 2006; 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: 2006
In 2006, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1968 had the buying
power of $579; the year's average CPI of 201.6 is the level
behind every 2006 figure on this page.
Inflation was 3.2% in 2006 and gasoline averaged $2.59 a gallon, up 29 cents from 2005. The
median household earned about $48,200 and the median new home cost $246,500, a gain of about
2% after a 13% jump in 2004 and 9% in 2005. National home prices, by the S&P/Case-Shiller
index, peaked in mid-2006. Ben Bernanke replaced Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chair on
February 1, and on June 29 the Fed raised its policy rate to 5.25%, the last of 17 straight
quarter-point increases. It held there for over a year. A first-class stamp rose to 39 cents in
January, and the federal minimum wage was $5.15 for the ninth full year in a row.
MLA: “Inflation from 1968 to 2006: $100 is worth $579 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2006/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1968 to 2006. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2006/