$100 in 1970 is worth $108 in 1972,
because prices increased 7.7% over that period, an average of
3.79% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$108
in 1972
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
7.7%
Average inflation rate
3.79% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$108
Price difference ($100 base)
$7.73
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1972
41.8
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1972
3.21%
$100 in 1970 → 1972
$108
$100 in 1972 → 1970
$92.82
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1972
Between 1970 and 1972, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 41.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 7.7%, which works out to an average of
3.79% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.93 buys in 1972: the 1970 dollar
lost 7.2% of its purchasing power over
these 2 years.
Consumer prices rose 5.7% in 1970, up from 1969’s 5.5%, extending a
run of faster price growth that stretched back to the mid-1960s, even as a
recession that began in December 1969 pushed unemployment toward 6%. Prices
and joblessness rising together confounded the era’s economic thinking, which
held that policymakers could trade a little more inflation for a little less
unemployment; 1970 was an early sign that trade-off was breaking down, a
pattern that would harden into stagflation later in the decade. Washington
restructured how it delivered mail that year: after postal workers staged the
first strike ever by federal employees that March, Congress passed the Postal
Reorganization Act in August, replacing the cabinet-level Post Office
Department with the independent U.S. Postal Service. Environmental policy
also took shape in 1970. An estimated 20 million Americans marked the first
Earth Day on April 22, and the Environmental Protection Agency opened that
December to enforce the Clean Air Act and the pollution rules that followed.
The Vietnam War kept dividing the country: on May 4, National Guard troops
fired on antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four
students and setting off strikes on hundreds of campuses. A median household
earned $8,734 that year, a gallon of gas averaged 36 cents, and a first-class
stamp cost 6 cents, the rate it had held since 1968. Prices stood 291.9%
above their 1913 level by the end of 1970, a milestone that
would look almost mild against the decade still to come.
Every 1970 amount converts to 1972 at the same ratio, 1.08: $1,000 becomes
$1,077, and $10,000 becomes $10,773.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1972
$1.00
$1.08
$5.00
$5.39
$10.00
$10.77
$20.00
$21.55
$50.00
$53.87
$100
$108
$500
$539
$1,000
$1,077
$5,000
$5,387
$10,000
$10,773
$100,000
$107,732
$1,000,000
$1,077,320
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1972
Between 1970 and 1972, medical care rose the most, up 9.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 5.2%, against 7.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1972, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.79%
$108
Medical care
4.74%
$110
Housing
4.04%
$108
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.85%
$108
Food
3.63%
$107
Energy
3.28%
$107
Transportation
3.15%
$106
Apparel
2.58%
$105
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1970: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1970
$100 from 1970 had already become $104 by
1971, on its way to $108 in 1972; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 4.4% in 1971, and the smallest rise was 3.2% in 1972.
In 1972, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $108; the year's average CPI of 41.8 is the level
behind every 1972 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose just 3.2% in 1972, the calmest year of the decade and a
sharp break from the previous two years. The relief was largely engineered:
Nixon’s wage and price controls, imposed as a 90-day freeze in August 1971,
had settled into a series of “phases” that capped how much businesses could
raise prices through the election year. Economists would later argue the
controls mostly deferred inflation rather than curing it, storing up pressure
that broke loose once they were lifted. Nixon spent political capital on
foreign policy that year, traveling to Beijing that February in the first
visit by a sitting U.S. president to the People’s Republic of China, a trip
that began normalizing relations Washington had frozen since 1949. Closer to
home, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National
Committee’s offices at the Watergate complex that June 17, an event that drew
little attention at the time but would eventually force Nixon from office.
None of it dented his re-election bid: Nixon carried 49 states against
Democrat George McGovern that November, helped by an economy that, on paper,
looked more stable than it had in years. A median household earned $9,697 in
1972, a new home sold for a median $27,600, and gas held near 36 cents a
gallon for a third straight year. Consumer prices stood 322.2% above their
1913 level, a lull that would not survive contact with the
controls’ expiration and the oil shock still to come.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1972: $100 is worth $108 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1972/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1972. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1972/