$100 in 1969 is worth $613 in 2011,
because prices increased 512.9% over that period, an average of
4.41% a year.
$100 in 1969 has
the same buying power as
$613
in 2011
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
512.9%
Average inflation rate
4.41% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$613
Price difference ($100 base)
$513
CPI in 1969
36.7
CPI in 2011
224.939
Inflation in 1969
5.46%
Inflation in 2011
3.16%
$100 in 1969 → 2011
$613
$100 in 2011 → 1969
$16.32
What happened to prices between 1969 and 2011
Between 1969 and 2011, the Consumer Price Index went from 36.7 to 224.939.
Cumulatively, prices increased 512.9%, which works out to an average of
4.41% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1969 bought what
$0.16 buys in 2011: the 1969 dollar
lost 83.7% of its purchasing power over
these 42 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 2011 at the same ratio, 6.13: $1,000 becomes
$6,129, and $10,000 becomes $61,291.
Amount in 1969
Value in 2011
$1.00
$6.13
$5.00
$30.65
$10.00
$61.29
$20.00
$123
$50.00
$306
$100
$613
$500
$3,065
$1,000
$6,129
$5,000
$30,646
$10,000
$61,291
$100,000
$612,913
$1,000,000
$6,129,128
Inflation by spending category, 1969–2011
Between 1969 and 2011, medical care rose the most, up 1154.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 115.0%, against 512.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1969
spending costs in 2011, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1969 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.41%
$613
Medical care
6.21%
$1,255
Energy
5.59%
$984
Housing
4.54%
$644
Food
4.42%
$614
Transportation
4.34%
$595
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.30%
$586
Apparel
1.84%
$215
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1969: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1969 to 2011
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 2000s (2.39% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1969–2011 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$594
2010–2011
3.16%
3.2%
$613
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1969
$100 from 1969 had already become $338 by
1989, on its way to $613 in 2011; 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: 2011
In 2011, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1969 had the buying
power of $613; the year's average CPI of 224.939 is the level
behind every 2011 figure on this page.
2011 brought the fastest inflation of the post-recession recovery. Consumer
prices rose 3.2%, roughly double the 2010 pace, and the cause was mostly at the
pump and the grocery store. Unrest across the Middle East and North Africa,
including the war in Libya, pushed gasoline to an annual average of $3.52 a
gallon, the highest yearly figure recorded to that point. Food prices also
rose faster than the overall index.
Household budgets did not keep up. The median household income was $50,054,
barely above the year before, and the median new home sold for about $227,200.
The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and a first-class stamp at 44 cents.
Policy stayed loose. The Federal Reserve kept its policy rate near zero and
launched Operation Twist in September to lower long-term rates. Washington
spent the summer in a debt-ceiling fight that ended in S&P’s August downgrade
of the U.S. credit rating. The inflation spike proved temporary: the
2011 rate was the high point of the early 2010s, and prices grew more slowly
in every year that followed until 2017.
MLA: “Inflation from 1969 to 2011: $100 is worth $613 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1969-to-2011/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1969 to 2011. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1969-to-2011/