$100 in 1970 is worth $212 in 1980,
because prices increased 112.4% over that period, an average of
7.82% a year.
$100 in 1970 has
the same buying power as
$212
in 1980
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
112.4%
Average inflation rate
7.82% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$212
Price difference ($100 base)
$112
CPI in 1970
38.8
CPI in 1980
82.4
Inflation in 1970
5.72%
Inflation in 1980
13.50%
$100 in 1970 → 1980
$212
$100 in 1980 → 1970
$47.09
What happened to prices between 1970 and 1980
Between 1970 and 1980, the Consumer Price Index went from 38.8 to 82.4.
Cumulatively, prices increased 112.4%, which works out to an average of
7.82% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1970 bought what
$0.47 buys in 1980: the 1970 dollar
lost 52.9% of its purchasing power over
these 10 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 1980 at the same ratio, 2.12: $1,000 becomes
$2,124, and $10,000 becomes $21,237.
Amount in 1970
Value in 1980
$1.00
$2.12
$5.00
$10.62
$10.00
$21.24
$20.00
$42.47
$50.00
$106
$100
$212
$500
$1,062
$1,000
$2,124
$5,000
$10,619
$10,000
$21,237
$100,000
$212,371
$1,000,000
$2,123,711
Inflation by spending category, 1970–1980
Between 1970 and 1980, energy rose the most, up 237.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 53.5%, against 112.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1970
spending costs in 1980, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1970 →
All items (CPI-U)
7.82%
$212
Energy
12.93%
$337
Housing
8.34%
$223
Transportation
8.28%
$222
Food
8.27%
$221
Medical care
8.22%
$220
Core (all items less food & energy)
7.07%
$198
Apparel
4.38%
$154
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 $139 by
1975, on its way to $212 in 1980; 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 3.2% in 1972.
In 1980, prices rose 13.5% and $100 from 1970 had the buying
power of $212; the year's average CPI of 82.4 is the level
behind every 1980 figure on this page.
1980 sat at the very peak of the Great Inflation. Prices rose 13.5% in that
single year, mortgage rates were climbing toward 16%, and the Federal Reserve
under Paul Volcker was administering the painful interest-rate medicine that
would finally break the inflationary spiral, at the cost of the deep 1981–82
recession. No single year looms larger in how Americans think about inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1970 to 1980: $100 is worth $212 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1980/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1970 to 1980. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1970-to-1980/