$100 in 1970 is worth $187 in 1979,
because prices increased 87.1% over that period, an average of
7.21% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$187
in 1979
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
87.1%
Average inflation rate
7.21% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$187
Price difference ($100 base)
$87.11
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1979
72.6
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1979
11.35%
$100 in 1970 → 1979
$187
$100 in 1979 → 1970
$53.44
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1979
Between 1970 and 1979, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 72.6.
Cumulatively, prices increased 87.1%, which works out to an average of
7.21% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.53 buys in 1979: the 1970 dollar
lost 46.6% of its purchasing power over
these 9 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 1979 at the same ratio, 1.87: $1,000 becomes
$1,871, and $10,000 becomes $18,711.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1979
$1.00
$1.87
$5.00
$9.36
$10.00
$18.71
$20.00
$37.42
$50.00
$93.56
$100
$187
$500
$936
$1,000
$1,871
$5,000
$9,356
$10,000
$18,711
$100,000
$187,113
$1,000,000
$1,871,134
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1979
Between 1970 and 1979, energy rose the most, up 157.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 43.4%, against 87.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1979, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
7.21%
$187
Energy
11.09%
$258
Food
8.23%
$204
Medical care
7.92%
$199
Housing
7.55%
$193
Transportation
7.27%
$188
Core (all items less food & energy)
6.50%
$176
Apparel
4.09%
$143
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 $127 by
1974, on its way to $187 in 1979; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 11.3% in 1979, and the smallest rise was 3.2% in 1972.
In 1979, prices rose 11.3% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $187; the year's average CPI of 72.6 is the level
behind every 1979 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 11.3% in 1979, the fastest pace since 1947 and the
decade’s second bout of double-digit inflation after 1974’s
11.0%. The trigger was familiar: the Iranian Revolution that January halted
Iran’s oil exports, and panic buying amplified the shortage, sending crude
prices sharply higher over the year and motorists back into gas lines, with
some states reviving the odd-even rationing last seen in 1974. Paul Volcker,
appointed Federal Reserve chairman that August, responded with a strategy
shift announced that October: the Fed would target the money supply directly
and let interest rates rise as high as necessary to break inflation, whatever
the short-term cost. That cost would arrive as a deep recession in 1981-82,
but by year’s end 1979 had already delivered enough turmoil on its own. A
reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
suffered a partial core meltdown that March 28, the worst commercial nuclear
accident in U.S. history, and on November 4, militants in Tehran stormed the
U.S. embassy and took 52 Americans hostage, beginning a 444-day crisis that
consumed the rest of Carter’s presidency. A median household earned $16,461
in 1979, a new home sold for a median $62,900, and gas jumped to 86 cents a
gallon. Consumer prices finished the decade 97.8% above where they stood in
1969, very nearly doubling in ten years, and stood 633.3%
above their 1913 level. The 1970s had opened with inflation
cooling from the 1969 spike and closed with prices rising faster than at any
point since 1947, setting up the Great
Inflation’s final act in 1980.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1979: $100 is worth $187 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1979/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1979. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1979/