$100 in 1969 is worth $501 in 2003,
because prices increased 401.4% over that period, an average of
4.86% a year.
$100 in 1969 has
the same buying power as
$501
in 2003
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
401.4%
Average inflation rate
4.86% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$501
Price difference ($100 base)
$401
CPI in 1969
36.7
CPI in 2003
184
Inflation in 1969
5.46%
Inflation in 2003
2.28%
$100 in 1969 → 2003
$501
$100 in 2003 → 1969
$19.95
What happened to prices between 1969 and 2003
Between 1969 and 2003, the Consumer Price Index went from 36.7 to 184.
Cumulatively, prices increased 401.4%, which works out to an average of
4.86% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1969 bought what
$0.20 buys in 2003: the 1969 dollar
lost 80.1% of its purchasing power over
these 34 years.
Consumer prices rose 5.5% in 1969, up from 1968’s 4.2% and
the fastest pace since the Korean War era, as years of Vietnam War
spending, a labor market with unemployment under 4%, and expansionary
fiscal policy finally showed up fully in prices. Richard Nixon was
inaugurated that January 20, pledging to curb rising prices without wage
and price controls, a position he would reverse within two years. The
decade’s most triumphant moment came that July 20, when Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon while Michael Collins orbited above,
fulfilling the goal Kennedy had set in 1961 of landing a man on the lunar
surface before the decade’s end. Culture and protest both reached new
extremes that year: an estimated 400,000 people gathered on a dairy farm
in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock music festival that August, and a
police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village that
June touched off days of resistance now credited with launching the
modern gay rights movement. Consumer prices finished the decade 270.7%
above their 1913 level, up 24.0% from where they stood in
1960. The 1960s had opened with inflation near 1% a year and closed with
prices rising faster than at any point since Korea, setting up the Great
Inflation that would define the
1970s. First-class postage held at 6 cents, and the minimum wage stayed
at $1.60 an hour.
Every 1969 amount converts to 2003 at the same ratio, 5.01: $1,000 becomes
$5,014, and $10,000 becomes $50,136.
Amount in 1969
Value in 2003
$1.00
$5.01
$5.00
$25.07
$10.00
$50.14
$20.00
$100
$50.00
$251
$100
$501
$500
$2,507
$1,000
$5,014
$5,000
$25,068
$10,000
$50,136
$100,000
$501,362
$1,000,000
$5,013,624
Inflation by spending category, 1969–2003
Between 1969 and 2003, medical care rose the most, up 831.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 112.9%, against 401.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1969
spending costs in 2003, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1969 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.86%
$501
Medical care
6.78%
$931
Energy
5.14%
$550
Housing
5.11%
$544
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.87%
$503
Food
4.75%
$485
Transportation
4.46%
$441
Apparel
2.25%
$213
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1969: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1969 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 1969–2003 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1969, at end
1969–1970
5.72%
5.7%
$106
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$225
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$356
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$469
2000–2003
2.23%
6.9%
$501
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1969
$100 from 1969 had already become $293 by
1985, on its way to $501 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 1969 had the buying
power of $501; 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 1969 to 2003: $100 is worth $501 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1969-to-2003/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1969 to 2003. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1969-to-2003/