$100 in 1970 is worth $114 in 1973,
because prices increased 14.4% over that period, an average of
4.60% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$114
in 1973
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
14.4%
Average inflation rate
4.60% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$114
Price difference ($100 base)
$14.43
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1973
44.4
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1973
6.22%
$100 in 1970 → 1973
$114
$100 in 1973 → 1970
$87.39
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1973
Between 1970 and 1973, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 44.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 14.4%, which works out to an average of
4.60% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.87 buys in 1973: the 1970 dollar
lost 12.6% of its purchasing power over
these 3 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 1973 at the same ratio, 1.14: $1,000 becomes
$1,144, and $10,000 becomes $11,443.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1973
$1.00
$1.14
$5.00
$5.72
$10.00
$11.44
$20.00
$22.89
$50.00
$57.22
$100
$114
$500
$572
$1,000
$1,144
$5,000
$5,722
$10,000
$11,443
$100,000
$114,433
$1,000,000
$1,144,330
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1973
Between 1970 and 1973, food rose the most, up 23.0%, while apparel rose the least, up 9.1%, against 14.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1973, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.60%
$114
Food
7.13%
$123
Energy
4.86%
$115
Medical care
4.50%
$114
Housing
4.22%
$113
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.78%
$112
Transportation
3.19%
$110
Apparel
2.95%
$109
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 $114 in 1973; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 6.2% in 1973, and the smallest rise was 3.2% in 1972.
In 1973, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $114; the year's average CPI of 44.4 is the level
behind every 1973 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 6.2% in 1973, nearly double 1972’s 3.2%,
as Nixon’s wage and price controls were phased out through the year and
pressure the controls had been holding back broke loose. The bigger shock
arrived that October, when Arab oil-producing states embargoed exports to the
United States and other supporters of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Crude
oil, which had traded around $3 a barrel, approached $12 by early 1974, and
gas lines became a fixture outside filling stations nationwide. Earlier in
the year, the Paris Peace Accords, signed that January 27, ended direct
American combat in Vietnam and set a 60-day deadline for withdrawing
remaining U.S. troops, even as fighting between North and South Vietnam went
on. Financial markets read the year correctly as a turning point: the Dow
Jones Industrial Average peaked at 1,051.70 on January 11, a level it would
not reach again until 1980, before the oil shock and rising interest rates
dragged it into a two-year bear market. A median household earned $10,512 in
1973, a new home sold for a median $32,500, and gas averaged 38.5 cents a
gallon, still under half of what the embargo’s effects would bring the
following year. Consumer prices stood 348.5% above their
1913 level by year’s end, with the decade’s worst inflation
still ahead.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1973: $100 is worth $114 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1973/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1973. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1973/