$100 in 1968 is worth $616 in 2009,
because prices increased 516.5% over that period, an average of
4.54% a year.
$100 in 1968 has
the same buying power as
$616
in 2009
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
516.5%
Average inflation rate
4.54% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$616
Price difference ($100 base)
$516
CPI in 1968
34.8
CPI in 2009
214.537
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
Inflation in 2009
-0.36%
$100 in 1968 → 2009
$616
$100 in 2009 → 1968
$16.22
What happened to prices between 1968 and 2009
Between 1968 and 2009, the Consumer Price Index went from 34.8 to 214.537.
Cumulatively, prices increased 516.5%, which works out to an average of
4.54% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1968 bought what
$0.16 buys in 2009: the 1968 dollar
lost 83.8% of its purchasing power over
these 41 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 2009 at the same ratio, 6.16: $1,000 becomes
$6,165, and $10,000 becomes $61,649.
Amount in 1968
Value in 2009
$1.00
$6.16
$5.00
$30.82
$10.00
$61.65
$20.00
$123
$50.00
$308
$100
$616
$500
$3,082
$1,000
$6,165
$5,000
$30,824
$10,000
$61,649
$100,000
$616,486
$1,000,000
$6,164,856
Inflation by spending category, 1968–2009
Between 1968 and 2009, medical care rose the most, up 1156.2%, while apparel rose the least, up 123.6%, against 516.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1968
spending costs in 2009, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1968 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.54%
$616
Medical care
6.37%
$1,256
Energy
5.20%
$798
Housing
4.78%
$678
Food
4.54%
$617
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.48%
$604
Transportation
4.12%
$523
Apparel
1.98%
$224
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1968: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1968 to 2009
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.47% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1968–2009 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
2000–2009
2.47%
24.6%
$616
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1968
$100 from 1968 had already become $340 by
1988, on its way to $616 in 2009; 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: 2009
In 2009, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1968 had the buying
power of $616; the year's average CPI of 214.537 is the level
behind every 2009 figure on this page.
2009 is the rarest kind of year in the modern price data: one where the cost
of living went down. The CPI fell 0.4%, the first full-year deflation
since 1955, as the Great Recession hollowed out demand and oil unwound from
its $147 spike the summer before. Gasoline that had cost over $4 a gallon in
July 2008 averaged $2.35 in 2009, and that energy collapse dragged the
12-month inflation rate to −2.1% by July, the deepest reading since 1950.
Policymakers treated falling prices not as relief but as a warning: deflation
raises the real weight of debt precisely when households are drowning in it,
which is why the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates near zero, began buying
bonds by the hundreds of billions, and Washington passed a $787 billion
stimulus. The medicine took: prices stabilized within a year, and 2009 remains
the textbook case of why central banks fear deflation more than moderate
inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1968 to 2009: $100 is worth $616 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2009/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1968 to 2009. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2009/